


Harrow Children

by joudama



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Zack Lives, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joudama/pseuds/joudama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The line between the quick and the dead is thin and blurred, and some fragments of memories live on past death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chibirisuchan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=chibirisuchan).



> In case any of y'all are wondering, the title is not me having thoroughly forgotten my native tongue. I can't claim it's not Engrish, because it is, but if Squeenix is going to Engrish up their title, I can Engrish up mine as well. "Harrow" comes from "harrowing," and more specifically, from "The Harrowing of Hell." Rather than churn out a long-ass author's notes section (this ain't Ein Sof, yo), I will just say, "Wiki is your friend!"
> 
> There is...a _lot_ of exposition in this. I'm really sorry. But...it can't be helped. Zack not dying changes WAY too many things (Zack is not, alas, plug and play), and since this isn't FF7 retold but AC retold, yeah, exposition dumps like _whoa_. Sorry! Likewise, this starts out quite similarly to the movie. Then the Butterfly Effect kicks in--in this case, _Zack_\--and things begin to deviate wildly.
> 
> Showing how it starts off similarly: the prologue, I took from a copy of the English script I found online of Advent Children, because I didn't feel like reinventing the wheel and translating it myself. But there are some changes I made based on the original Japanese and changes made to tailor it to this fic. But! Any movie dialogue, yeah, so, those are my translations, because scenes that are from the movie more or less as-is I did while watching it, rather than from the script, because I don't have the movie in English or with English subs. Plus, this version is a revision based on scenes that have been added to AC in Advent Children Complete, and I translated all the dialogue from ACC for those. So, heh heh, yeah.
> 
> Speaking of boring shit to get out of the way before we get started, I use "Shinra" as the family name and "ShinRa" for the company, lest anyone wonder why my capitalization seems flaky. There is a method to my madness, promise. I also use "Aerith" instead of "Aeris" since my first introduction to her was AC, where it was romanized "Aerith"...and I admit to really liking the way it looks with the "th." Ironically enough, though, I like the way "Aeris" sounds better, but hey.

_The Lifestream. _

_That's what we call the river of life that circles our planet, giving life to the world and everything in it. The ShinRa Company discovered a way to use the Lifestream as an energy source. Because of ShinRa's energy, we were able to have very well-off lives. But wasn't that because we were taking away from the planet's life? _

_A lot of people thought so. _

_ShinRa used their power to try and stop anybody who got in their way. ShinRa had a special group of fighters called SOLDIERs, and all of the SOLDIERs had Jenova cells put inside of them. Jenova was a calamity that fell from the sky a long, long time ago and tried to destroy the planet._

_There was one SOLDIER named Sephiroth who was better than all the rest. When he found out about the terrible experiments that made him, he began to hate ShinRa, and then, over time, he began to hate everything. Sephiroth hated the planet so much he wanted to make it go away. _

_There were a lot of battles. For every battle, there was more sadness. Someone I loved went back to the Lifestream, too. But someone I love kind of came back from it._

_And then that day came - the day of destiny. _

_In the end, the planet itself had to make the battles stop for good. The planet used the Lifestream as a weapon. And when it burst out of the earth, all the fighting, all the grief and sadness, everything, was washed away._

_It's been two years since they told me that._

_But it looks like the planet is a whole, whole lot madder than we thought._

_Geostigma. There's no cure, but..._

_But, maybe the planet's not so mad, because maybe there's one person who can fix it._

_Please...if anyone can it's you, so please, please find a way to heal it, so the planet doesn't take you all away._

\--

Kadaj's voice was soft, but carried over the sound of the service elevator.

The old ShinRa building was being rebuilt.

As was Midgar--Edge.

It seemed a ridiculous cycle, and that was what prompted his words, prompted his digression from his task. "Destruction and creation. Why do humans keep doing the same thing over and over again? I just can't understand it," he said. He didn't expect much of an answer to his question, nor did he particularly want one. An answer served no purpose, after all. It seemed to have no purpose at all, continuing to rebuilt when it would be destroyed again.

There was a sharp clang of metal as the gate of the service elevator opened, and Rufus Shinra surprised him with an answer.

"Humans are bad with memories, " he said blandly. "That is why we pretty things up, and expand. Pain turns into nostalgia, and we try to overcome the past."

Kadaj pushed Rufus' wheelchair as he thought about this, tried to make sense of it, tried to use that information to make sense of what Rufus had done and why Kadaj himself was here; tie it to the only thing that mattered. His voice was softer, somehow younger sounding than it had been a few moments before. "And are you trying to retrieve Mother because of _memories_?"

He walked away from behind the wheelchair at stared out at the grey sky, waiting for this answer but not fully expecting one. Humans never had good answers, not when it came to Mother--that much he already _knew_.

"That is to...eliminate a difficulty."

"Ah, you mean Geostigma? " Kadaj said, his amusement coming out in his voice. A 'difficulty' for the humans, of course, who had never understood Mother. "But if you want to look at the root of that...it's all of _your_ fault," Kadaj said. If anyone was responsible, it was the humans--they had started all of this, after all, and continued to not understand.

All of a sudden, something clicked and he stepped back, turning now to look at the sky. "Ohh, I get it," he said, as it began to make sense--as _Rufus_ and everything he was doing began to make sense.

"_You're_ bad with memories, too."

Rufus let out a low chuckle. "No. I'm just..._quite_ forgetful."

They stared out at the sky, and Kadaj processed this as well as they both fell into silence, the only sound that of the wind rustling through the skeletal frame of what would one day be the ShinRa Tower once more.


	2. Part the First

Outside, the city was bustling, the sounds of a busy city that was, through it all, still alive. There were the sound of cars, of laughter and of yelling, of people going about their lives. Outside, the city was _alive_.

Inside, the phone was ringing.

"No one's here now~," Tifa said in a sing-song voice, ignoring the phone ringing as she finished up washing dishes and only half listening to the news broadcast, something about the density of the Lifestream in the atmosphere having dropped.

She ignored both the phone and the news and went about cleaning up. The bar had been hopping all night, and she'd been one set of hands short, thanks to Zack being off on a delivery. For all Zack tended to cause havoc, he also had a way with the patrons, and when he was around business was better, but last night had still been really, really good.

"_Our next story is about compensation claims against the ShinRa Company_\--"

The phone kept on ringing, and she frowned a little--that wasn't the line for the bar, but the delivery business, and if someone was being _that_ persistent, there had to be a reason for it. So she turned off the water and dried her hands, half-hoping the person would just hang up before she got there.

No such luck, she thought as she climbed the stairs and made her way to the phone through the house, pretending not to hear Denzel's quiet pleading for Marlene not to tell Cloud he was worse and Marlene's sad "OK", passing a picture of the five of them--her, Cloud, Zack, and the children; her and Marlene smiling together for the camera, Denzel trying to hide his Geostigma, and Cloud looking like he was doing his best to escape the headlock that Zack, grinning his head off, had put him in to keep him from trying to sidle off to the side when the picture was being taken. The picture had caught Cloud mid-flail, and Denzel was giving Zack a _look_ even as he was smoothing his hair over his Geostigma.

"Strifair Deliveries, how may I help you? Whatever it might be, we can...may I ask who this is?" Suddenly, Tifa broke out into a smile, chuckling as she placed the man on the other side. "Of _course_ I remember you, yeah, y'know?"

\--

His PHS was ringing. Zack fumbled for it, not wanting to take his eyes off the barren landscape in front of him because, yeah, there was nothing there _now_, but Zack knew his luck--the second he took his eyes away, a Zolom or something would show up and try to eat his bike, and Cloud had said if he brought his bike back one more time looking like something big, nasty, and multifanged had been chewing on it, he wasn't fixing it for him anymore.

He managed to get the phone right before it would have gone into voicemail, and gave a cheerful whoop. "A-haHA, got it! And Zack Fair here, delivery man extraordinaire!"

Tifa laughed in his ear. "Congratulations. And here I thought I was going to have to leave a message."

"Aww, you miss me that much, you couldn't wait 'till I got back to hear the melodious sound of my voice?" Zack teased.

Tifa let out a snort. "Keep telling yourself that, Fair, OK?"

"I will, thanks!" Zack said, grinning, and Tifa laughed again.

"_Anyway_. The real reason I'm calling."

"Aww, it's not to hear the melodious sound of my voice?" he said, pouting even though she couldn't see it.

"No, but you keep talking and the point of this call'll be to run up your PHS bill. You remember how high it was last month?"

Zack deflated. "But I had enough to pay it, so it was fine."

Tifa snorted again. "You _barely_ had enough, Zack. _Barely_. And _anyway_. The reason I'm calling. I just got a call from Reno. He's in Healin, and--."

"Wait, don't tell me he wants to hear the melodious sound of my voice!" Zack said, his voice full of mock-horror.

"Actually, he _does_," Tifa said with a laugh.

Zack groaned.

"He's in Healin, and he says he's got a job for you."

Zack groaned again, with feeling this time. "Aww, man, when someone from _ShinRa_ wants _me_ to do something, you _know_ the planet's gonna try to blow itself inside out again," he said, his voice a whine.

"Phone bill money," Tifa said, sounding like she was holding back a laugh even though her voice was scolding.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll drop by there after I get back. I'm almost back to Midgar, and if I'm going to have to deal with the poster boy for ADHD, I want a food and a shower first."

"You, of all people, should never accuse _anyone_ of being hyper," Tifa said, and Zack would have sworn he could hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. "And I'll see about scrounging something up for you to eat when you get back. And if I can drag Cloud back here, too."

Zack grinned. "All right, food! And don't worry about Cloud--I'll swing by the church and pick him up on my way back."

"Thanks," Tifa said. "See you soon." There was a click as she hung up, and Zack stuck his PHS back in his pocket. All in all, things were looking pretty good--Tifa was a great cook, for all Cloud liked to hide in the church Zack was always able to drag him out, physically if need be, and so far, his bike was still in one piece, meaning he actually _would_ be able to go drag Cloud out instead of hiding from him. And if this was a delivery job for someone from ShinRa, well, _if_ he took it, he'd charge them _more_ than enough to pay his phone bill. For the next _year_. ShinRa _more_ than owed him, he figured.

All in all, he thought, humming as he made his bike roar and took off faster for home, things were going _great_.

All of a sudden he flinched, letting out a sharp hiss and one hand clutching reflexively at his stomach, the world flashing and flickering like an electric bolt before righting itself; his own body reminding him that things weren't as all right as they seemed.

\--

There was a city, off in the distance, and the three of them slowed their motorcycles on the dusty cliff above it, coming to a halt and looking down. Dust swirled around them, hazing the broken city--and the new city that struggled to rise from its ashes--for a moment.

"Kadaj, is that the city where our brothers are?" Yazoo asked, his deep voice low.

"Yeah," Kadaj said, nodding, the wind blowing his hair as he smiled. They were so _close_ now, close to their traitorous brothers, and, more importantly, close to _Mother_. She was there, somewhere.

"Do you think they'll come greet us?"

"Not a chance," Kadaj said, still smiling.

"Don't cry, Yazoo," Loz said, his smile a smirk.

"You think Mother might be with them?" Yazoo asked, ignoring Loz.

"Maybe not," Kadaj said, his voice oddly light and noncommittal.

Loz's breath hitched, and Yazoo quickly returned the "Don't cry," his said not with the amusement of Loz's but with an irritation at such a sudden display of emotion, and Loz sniffled, trying to keep his tears in.

Something caught Kadaj's eye and he raised his chin. "Look. It's our big brother," he said, and gestured down below them, to the road beneath the cliff where a motorcycle was speeding by.

The three of them looked at each other, Yazoo smiling and Loz laughing with the anticipation making their mako green eyes shine.

Since their brother had been so kind as to show up, the _least_ they could do was go and greet him properly.

\--

Zack had a feeling he was in trouble when two grey-haired men who definitely weren't old enough to have that color hair, on bikes that almost put his to shame, showed up out of nowhere behind him.

Zack knew he was in trouble when they started _summoning_ things.

In a movement without thought, he pulled the Buster sword from the holster on his back, and when the first one jumped for him, he let out a war whoop and _struck_, his bike turning almost like thought as he twisted to slice the monster in half before it could get him.

He turned again the other way, twisting now fluidly into a backhand slice, taking out another of the quick and uglies that were coming after him.

He had just righted himself when one of the men caught up with him, pulling his bike in tight and close, and Zack had no idea who in Hel's name he was.

But what he did know was the last time he had seen eyes like_ that_, it hadn't been good.

"Where's Mother?" the man asked, and oh, yeah, _that_ wasn't good at _all_.

"What?!" Zack managed to let out, and not much more before the silver-haired guy with _Sephiroth's eyes_ pulled away just enough to get some leverage, and then did his best to take off Zack's head with the overpowered, Reno'd-have-a-heart-attack-and-_die_-from-jealousy weapon of his. Zack twisted, turning his bike almost in a circle to avoid it because it looked like it would hurt a lot, and found himself instead face to face with the other one, the bad feeling he'd been nursing only getting worse because this one not only had Sephiroth's eyes but was about halfway to getting his hair the same, too.

_This is not good_, part of him thought, and the thought got stronger when the Seph-a-like kid pulled out a gunblade that _Vincent_ would have had a heart attack and died of jealousy over.

None of them had swords, though, and he thanked the gods for _that_ small favor.

"You're not hiding her from us, are you, brother?"

"_Brother_?!" Zack managed to squawk, thoroughly confused. "Do I_ look_ like we're related?!" he managed to yell before deciding that maybe he needed to conserve his breath and concentrate on not ending up a big, messy smear in the middle of the desert outside Midgar.

If he died out here, Tifa was _never_ going to let him live it down.

\--

Kadaj ignored his brothers fighting below him, concentrating instead on his phone conversation.

"Or could it be that you've tricked us? Mother is _there_, isn't she?"

Kadaj laughed at the response on the other end, sitting side-straddle on his bike. "Oh, now stop yelling."

His face changed suddenly and his voice grew ice cold. "I don't feel like talking to you." He looked down, watching his brothers chasing around below him, Yazoo and Loz driving circles around their big brother, firing and attacking. "Put the president on."

\--

The world spun upside down, and Zack was very glad that he had lost the coin toss this time to see who'd be making the delivery run, him or Cloud.

So the bike was airborne, spinning upside down and flipping right over the one who really looked way too much like the way Sephiroth must have looked like when he was about eighteen, long hair and all.

...The one who had a smile that Zack knew did _not_ bode well on his face and his gunblade aimed straight at Zack's head.

Zack had just enough time to think "Well, _shit_" before the little Sephiroth-in-training fired at him, and Zack was suddenly _very_ grateful to Tifa--Tifa and her "if you're going to be tearing off in the desert outside Midgar, here. You'll need these, and one word about how they make you look like Reno and I'll_ hit_ you" goggles that she had made him take with him. The goggles the little mini-Sephiroth shot off of him.

So he wasn't dead, but fuckall if his face didn't hurt a whole lot and the change in brightness wasn't making his eyes sting, a stinging not aided by the blood dripping into his eyes, and now there were even more of the multifanged monsters beelining for his bike. Plus the big Sephiroth-eyed guy trying his best to leave Zack twitching on the side of the road.

...He hadn't had this much fun in _forever_.

"That all you got?!" he yelled, grinning like a madman, his entire body thrumming with adrenaline as he took down two more of the monsters. "Yeah, _bring it on_!"

And just when things were getting _interesting_, when the monsters decided all at once that leaping for his face was a good idea, they all suddenly just _vanished_ into puffs of black smoke. And the two freakish little Sephiroth copies abruptly turned around and started tearing off in the other direction, and Zack couldn't very well just let them _go_, not after they'd shot off his goggles _and_ shot his bike full of holes. He was going to get yelled at by both Cloud _and_ Tifa for this, so he _owed_ the little Sephiroth-snots.

Then he pulled his bike up short, some instinct having made him look up, and he didn't like what he was seeing one little bit.

"Oh, _shit_," he said, jaw hanging open. There was a third one, on the top of the cliff, and he was obviously the one in charge.

And he had a _sword_. Still in its scabbard, but fuck, it was definitely a sword.

The one on the top of the cliff gave him a smirk that was more like Sephiroth than the other two _combined_, the pre-crazy Sephiroth, but Zack wasn't making any bets that any little Sephiroth-copies running around _now_ were going to be walking down the sane side of the street. Then he got on his bike and took off, the same direction as the other two, and Zack just sat there, jaw hanging open and blinking in disbelief before his brain kicked into gear.

He turned back around and took off for Midgar as fast as he could, fumbling for his PHS. He'd dealt with copies before, thanks to Genesis, and dealing with copies _never_ ended well. There was no way he was going to talk to _anyone_ from ShinRa _now_, not until he'd gotten everyone up to speed, because he wasn't going anywhere but home towards his materia until he was _equipped_.

When he finally managed to get the damned PHS out he hit the first number on speed dial, tucking it between his ear and shoulder so he could steer with one had and wipe the blood out of his face with the other.

"Hey, you done already?" Cloud said by way of greeting, for once actually answering his phone instead of ignoring its existence, and for that, Zack was extraordinarily grateful. "Tifa just called me."

"Hey to you, too, and oh gods, kid, I think we've got a problem," Zack said, blinking blood out of his eyes and giving up on trying to wipe it away. He'd get it fixed up soon enough anyway.

"Quit calling me that, and what kind of problem?" Cloud asked, and Zack could hear Cloud shifting around, and off to the side he said, "Marlene! When did you get here? And hand me the trowel. Thanks."

"You're still at the church?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Good. Go equip yourself, 'cause like I said, I think we got a problem. I just had three guys that looked _way_ too much like Sephiroth-but-not try to put a bunch of holes in me _and_ my bike."

There was a long silence before Cloud, in his way, summed the situation up far better than Zack could have, with a single, fleeting, and emotion-filled "..._Fuck_."

\--

Cloud was waiting for him inside the church, looking grim.

"Where's Marlene?"

"I dropped her off back home. Her and half the materia. I figure if something is going after you, we _shouldn't_ have it all in one place."

"Good idea," Zack said, nodding and noticing that Cloud had an equipped bracer on.

"And what in Hel's sweet name happened to your face?" Cloud said, his eyes locking on the cut on Zack's head, bisecting his eyebrow and sweeping across his temple.

"One of the little Sephiroth-copies shot my goggles off," he said, making a face. "And I _liked_ that pair, too!"

"Didn't you have a Cure on you?" Cloud chided, ignoring Zack's whine. "Or at least a Potion?"

"Yes, Mom," Zack said, grinning and rolling his eyes. "But it's just a scratch!"

"Shut up, asshole," Cloud said, elbowing Zack in the stomach but careful to avoid where he knew the Geostigma was. "And don't move," he said, catching Zack's arm and raising a hand up to brush Zack's eyebrow. Cloud closed his eyes, concentrating, and Zack felt the remaining sting of the cut fading.

"There. Next time be more careful," Cloud said, elbowing Zack again, ignoring Zack's "Oof!" when he did so.

"I've got your number, Strife," Zack said, wincing as he rubbed his stomach. "You're just faking at healing. You're really just making me forget my face hurts by making my stomach hurt more! Faker!"

Cloud raised an eyebrow. "Go look in the mirror and tell me that again," he said smugly.

Zack didn't have to, he already knew, but he wasn't about to say it. You'd be damned hard-pressed, after all, to find a better healer anywhere on the planet now than Cloud Strife.

It had been weird, the first time Cloud had smiled and _it hadn't been his smile_.

It had been _Aerith's_.

And it had been weird, the first time Cloud's eyes had gone slightly unfocused as he knelt by flowers--_flowers_\--his head tilting like he was listening to something and his fingers brushing them with a reverence Zack hadn't seen in anyone but...

And things grew around Cloud now, and his smile that wasn't his made something in Zack's chest _hurt_.

He hadn't had any cause to complain, though...not when Cloud had been able to cast Holy when they'd needed it.

But to this day, he wasn't sure if it was a miracle or a cruelty, whatever had happened when Aerith died. It kept Sephiroth from being able to take Cloud over again, and it meant that Aerith wasn't really _gone_, but...but _Cloud_ wasn't really there, either. Cloud had somehow rebuilt himself, or maybe Aerith had rebuilt him, Zack didn't know which, and he wasn't quite the same person anymore.

Now Cloud smiled Aerith's smile, and while he wasn't any kind of great shakes at fighting, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone to match him at a healing spell or growing plants.

Cloud had his limits with healing--he couldn't cure Geostigma, but he could make it _better_, for a while, staving off the effects for a few weeks. Zack didn't ask it of him, though, and would threaten to put Cloud in a headlock if he tried to heal him--trying left Cloud exhausted, like he was fighting the planet itself, and he could always tells when Cloud had gone into Denzel's room at night, when the boy slept, and tried to relieve some of the kid's symptoms--Denzel saw how much it took out of Cloud, poor kid, and had started actually trying to hide how bad things were getting to spare Cloud. Trying to alleviate some of the Geostigma would leave Cloud paler than normal, almost bloodlessly pale and bags like dark bruises under his eyes, the Geostigma mottling his own arm darker and more frightening, _weeping_ down Cloud's arm no matter how many bandages he'd had on. He always shook off Zack and Tifa's concerns, saying he was _close_, so very, very _close_ to figuring out what to do, and looking dejected, as if he felt that, somehow, if Aerith was there, she'd have already figured out the trick of it.

But the thing of it was, Aerith already was there, far more than Cloud himself knew. So if sometimes Cloud remembered things that he shouldn't have, like Zack falling through the church ceiling, or Zack crying on the floor of the church after Angeal had--...well, Zack figured, things would work out somehow, eventually. But it was hard on Cloud, trying to keep all of it straight; trying to tell which memories were his and which the memories of a woman that he had met, but not when he had been in much shape to _know_. Cloud had been half-formed, prone to staring off into space if left alone, and unable to remember much of anything if pressed.

Cloud'd...started to come back, a little, as Tifa had tried to talk to him and remind him of their past, even though Zack knew it was killing part of her to do; that it killed part of her to know that he didn't remember her, or _anything_, at all. He had almost been like a blank slate, waiting for someone to write and imprint something on him. And Sephiroth had tried. Sephiroth had tried _really_ hard.

And then...and then Aerith had died, and somehow she had_ fused_ with Cloud, and his memories were things that didn't make sense to anyone including himself. But he took it in stride, just smiling Aerith's smile and keeping his head up when anyone was around--when he was alone was anyone's guess, but Zack had a pretty good idea Cloud didn't keep up the good fight when he was alone. He had seen Cloud, once, in the church, laying in the middle of the flowers with his eyes closed and looking like strain of the duality of what he was now and the conflicting drives and instincts were more than he could take. Zack had slipped away when he saw Cloud like that in the church, feeling like he shouldn't interfere and, more than anything else, feeling _helpless_...and then he went to chew Tifa out for a good long while, because as much as she got it _now_, sometimes, early in at least, she just hadn't _gotten_ it, about how Cloud was never going back to whatever she might have remembered him as. Even if Aerith hadn't died, all those years in a tank would change anyone, he knew that _far_ too well, and with the mako poisoning on top of that...

But over the last two years, Cloud had gotten _better_; better at telling his memories from Aerith's, better at coming to terms with who he had become and everything _they_ had lost--what he had lost to Hojo and Shinra, and what Aerith had lost to help him, to fill in his gaps and insulate him against Sephiroth's attempts to take him over.

Zack had asked Aerith, before she died, if Cloud would ever fully wake up and get better. She'd always looked so sad, and she wouldn't make eye contact, only look away before saying one day he would, "but--". She always stopped at "but--" and wouldn't say anything else, only shook her head and changed the subject.

And now, looking back, he had to wonder how much she had known about what it would take.

Cloud still tended to avoid both Zack and Tifa some days; it was as if some days the two of them pulled him too much in two radically different directions, and they both left him to sort it and himself out, even though it killed them to do so. Zack had seen Tifa sitting in the bar, after the children had gone to sleep and Cloud had slipped out, with her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking. Zack had patted her shoulder, knowing all too well how she felt, knowing there had been days when he wanted to be doing what she was now--they had both lost the person they loved, and then gotten them back in a way that was more of a cruelty than anything else.

Especially now with the Geostigma.

And Cloud wouldn't lean on any of them, because he couldn't, and all they could do was watch his struggle with himself. They couldn't say very much when he would disappear for days or weeks on end and not answer anyone's calls to his PHS, other than to yell at him when he came back. They would yell, and he would shrug in a way that was Cloud, and smile in a way that was Aerith, and their words would die off.

Then came the day they both realized how long Cloud's hair was getting, and how it was beginning to remind them both paradoxically of Aerith _and_ of Sephiroth; far, far too much of a physical reminder that Cloud really _wasn't_ alone in there, not with Aerith and random bits of Sephiroth from the times when Sephiroth had managed to take Cloud over when Cloud was still that blank slate, and neither _one_ of them wanted to give greens to _that_ Fat Chocobo in the room.

Admittedly, Cloud had gamely attempted to get a hair cut. _Once_. Tifa had insisted and Zack had stayed out of it because he kind of understood where she was coming from, and Cloud had gotten as far as the barber pulling out the scissors and going behind him before he had _launched_ himself out of the chair, doing a kind of tuck and roll thing that was actually pretty impressive, coming up in a crouching fighting stance and from that stance, still low to the ground, spinning to face them and returning to that same crouching fighting stance. Denzel, who'd also been shipped off to get a hair cut, stared at Cloud with huge eyes from his chair, and after the first rush of pride at Cloud having pulled off a really sweet move like that, Zack had felt something sink at the look in Cloud's eyes, because it was pretty obvious why the guy got kind of twitchy about sharp, pointy objects coming up behind him.

But this had come out of _nowhere_\--Cloud didn't any problems at all with Zack's sword coming at him when Zack made him spar with him--and Cloud _had_ to know about Sephiroth stabbing him in Nibelheim thanks to the giant scar he had--nor had he even flinched when _Sephiroth himself_ had been waving Masamune around before they finally killed him.

But then, that time in Nibelheim had only _almost_ killed him and Cloud wasn't the type to get twitchy, but getting stabbed _had_ killed Aerith and maybe she _was_ the type, and then again no one really knew _why_ Sephiroth had insisted on keeping his hair that long even in the middle of a _war_ and that was when Zack's head started hurting.

Cloud'd glared at Zack like he dared him to say something as he pulled himself out of his tense fighting stance, but Zack just kinda scratched the back of his head and said, "OK, no haircuts for you, Twitchy," and laughed, because what else could he do?

"Unless Tifa cuts my hair in my sleep," Cloud had muttered, relaxing and still giving Zack slightly wary looks, as if waiting for Zack to start giving him a hard time or laugh _at_ him.

So Zack'd just patted the Cloud's head, ignoring Cloud's irritated growling, bristly flailing to get Zack off of him. "Nah. She wouldn't...well, OK, but it won't be any spikier than it is now after she's done," he said, thinking better of it, and he grinned again as he gave Cloud's hair one last ruffle, getting an elbow in the ribs for it. "Hey, think you trim the front at least?" he asked the barber, who was by then looking like he really wanted to just ask them to leave. "That way we can say we tried," Zack said wryly to Cloud, who made a face before he looked at the hair in his face and glared at it, then nodded.

The barber managed to trim the front, but he got as far as edging towards behind Cloud before the next thing you knew, there were Cloud finger-shaped gouges in the chair and the barber had tossed the scissors onto the counter and had his hands up where Cloud could see them.

On the way home, Zack had stopped and picked up some of the hair ties like the ones Tseng favored, figuring that way, at least Cloud wouldn't have that weird Sephiroth-hair thing starting to happen, and Cloud had taken the hair ties and then had gotten this _look_ and Zack wanted to smack himself, because he hadn't even _thought_, and Tifa was going to _kill_ him and he was going to _deserve_ it this time, and Cloud was buying his _own_ hair ties from here on out.

So they went back home with Cloud with shorter spiky bangs than he'd had going out and the rest of his hair pulled back, and Tifa had just _sighed_.

He'd explained it to her later, and she'd gotten that sad look that always made Zack want to give her a hug or something before she shook her head and said, "Well, I guess it can't be helped, then. And as long as he doesn't show up here in a pink dress and bangles, I guess things will work out," she'd said, smiling gamely.

"And if he _does_ show up in a pink dress," Zack had said with a grin, "I am taking _photos_. A lot of them."

She'd laughed at that, and Zack vowed never to tell Tifa that sometimes, sometimes Cloud remembered things that he just _shouldn't_ have known. Things that weren't Cloud and weren't Aerith, either. Things that were _Sephiroth_. He knew Tifa worried because of the times Sephiroth had taken Cloud over and how he hadn't been _himself_, not even as he was then, afterwards, but Tifa hadn't been there at the very end, when it had been only the three of them, Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth, and Cloud had still not been completely _back_ yet, even with parts of Aerith filling in the blanks--perhaps things resonated too differently, were too incongruous and couldn't fit, and so when Sephiroth had died, vowing that somehow he would live on...and that _smile_ he had given Cloud...

Zack didn't much want to think about that. He was only grateful that the flashes and fragments of things Cloud remembered that he shouldn't have known were things from _before_ Nibelheim.

Zack wanted, sometimes, to ask Cloud if he remembered Nibelheim at all, but he never would--if Cloud had any memory fragments of when Sephiroth had gone crazy, it was better they were left untouched and buried.

Tifa never talked to Cloud about Nibelheim, not anymore, so Zack figured there was no need to rock the boat.

"So what happened out there?" Cloud said, growing serious again and jarring Zack out of his thoughts.

Oh, yeah, Zack thought, _that_ mess--that was a lot more of an immediate concern than who besides Cloud might or might not be camping out inside Cloud's head. "I was riding back here, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these guys on bikes showed up, attacking me and calling me _brother_," Zack said, sounding completely perplexed. "And unless there's something my parents didn't tell me, I don't _have_ any brothers. And definitely not _three_ brothers with silver hair and eyes like _Sephiroth_."

"I thought the clones were all gone," Cloud said, frowning.

"You and me both, kid!" Zack said, throwing his hands in the air and dropping down to sit cross-legged on the wooden floor. "If someone had told me a couple hours ago I'd have three Sephiroth clones coming out of the woodworks and attacking me, I'd have told them to leave the Gongagan moonshine to the Gongagans!"

"_Fuck_," Cloud said again, shaking his head and sitting down, on the edge of where the flowers were growing--thriving even more than they had with Aerith, because of the sunlight reaching them and Cloud having ripped out some of the floorboards to give them more room.

"You got that right," Zack said, groaning and flinging himself back melodramatically until he was lying sprawled on the church floor, in a patch of colored light from the broken stained glass windows.

"And until we know what's going on, we can't do anything," Cloud said, making a face.

All of a sudden, Zack's expression changed, getting a hopeful and sneaky look all at the same time. "Hey, I know something you _can_ do. Since you fixed me up so well," he said, sitting up and scooting over next to Cloud; slinging an arm around Cloud's shoulder and giving him a big, "I'm so totally innocent, here" smile and making puppy eyes. "My bike kinda took some hits, so you wanna maybe take a look at it?"

"...Oh, sweet Shiva, what did you do to the bike _this_ time?" Cloud said, groaning.

"Nothing! Well, _I_ didn't do anything, but the wackos that attacked me kinda did a number on it..." he said sheepishly.

Cloud shook his head. "Didn't I say that if that bike came back looking like Bahamut had chewed on it again I was making you fix the damn thing?"

"But it doesn't look like Bahamut chewed on it this time!" Zack said pleadingly, and Cloud just gave him one of those "..." looks he was so good at. "OK, maaaaaaybe it looks like he nibbled on it. A _little_."

"Yeah. The toolbox is over there, Fair," Cloud said, gesturing with his thumb towards the back of the church.  
 "You're...you're really gonna make me try and fix it?" Zack said, jaw falling open. Cloud shoved Zack's arm off him and got up; brushed himself off and started walking to the back with Zack jumping up and following him, dogging his heels and pleading. "But Cloud, you're so much better at fixing bikes than I am! I can clean her up, yeah, but you've got magic hands! You do the same thing I do but she's _humming_ when you do it! You and bikes are like you and chocobos! And you wouldn't leave me in charge of a chocobo-fixing, and wow that sounded _wrong_, but whatever, you wouldn't leave that to _me_ when the _master_ is right there, right?"

"Don't you need to breathe?" Cloud said, picking up the toolbox and raising his eyebrow at Zack, giving him a seemingly disbelievingly look at the sheer amount of words Zack had produced without bothering to take a breath. "And here you go," he said, holding the toolbox out to Zack with a little smile. "Have fun."

Zack deflated, shoulders slumping and chin dropping to his chest. "But Cloooooud..."

"Everything you need's in here," Cloud said, his expression flat but Zack could tell there was a smile back there, trying to come out. So Zack just looked at him, eyes pleading and making pathetic "But...but...but..." noises.

The corners of Cloud's lips quirked up slightly. "This is why Angeal always called you a puppy," he said, shaking his head but nothing disapproving in the gesture at all.

Disbelieving, perhaps, but not disapproving.

"Aww, c'mon, why does everyone call me that?" Zack said, mock pouting and giving Cloud the puppy-eyes full blast, hoping looking pathetic would get his bike fixed.

The way Cloud shoved his shoulder reminded him of Aerith, and he saw Cloud blink and shake his head quickly, as if he suddenly was remembering something and was trying to shake it away. The sudden red across Cloud's cheeks reaffirmed things, and Cloud pulled his hand back quickly, almost as if burned. "Idiot," he finally mumbled, and clutched tightly at the toolbox with both hands, not making eye contact. "I'm...I'm gonna go fix your bike," he said, eyes shifting towards the doorway. "It took you three tries just to build a stupid _flower_ cart, so only the gods know what you'd end up doing to your bike if it's really in need of repairs."

Zack grinned and jumped on Cloud, determined to jolt Cloud out of his impending broodiness. "Really? You'll fix it? Cloud, you're the best! I love you! Marry me!"

Cloud almost fell over from Zack's weight hitting him like a freight train, and he let out a squawk Zack personally thought was adorable, then turned even redder--the great thing about Cloud, he thought, was that with as pale as he was, when he blushed, he turned _really_ red and right now his face was red as Ifrit's flame. "Get off of me!" Cloud yelled, biting back laughter, and shoved Zack away. "Sweet Shiva, you really are a puppy. An _idiot_ puppy."

"...but you'll still fix my bike?" Zack said, hopefully. Cloud may have been using fixing the bike as an excuse to get away, but the plain truth was that Cloud was really damned good at bike repairs, way better than Zack thanks to Cloud being more methodical and patient, and whenever Cloud tuned his bike, she purred like a kitten and ran like a hasted chocobo.

"I'll still fix your bike. _This_ time," Cloud said with a grin he tried to bite back, and headed for the door, shaking his head and muttering about idiot puppies that needed a good thwap with a rolled-up newspaper some days.

_Better_, Zack thought with a grin, watching Cloud go. _And 'idiot puppy,' eh? Angeal would have appr_\--. Zack suddenly, as if someone had doused him with ice water, went cold, the smile sliding off his face so quickly it was as if it had never been there. _Cloud...Cloud never met Angeal. How did he know Angeal used to call me a..._

He shut that line of thought down and fast. He _knew_ how Cloud knew, because there was only one way Cloud could know, but it wasn't something Zack wanted to think about.

He had a horrible feeling though, that he was going to have to think about it, and sooner rather than later.

Food and that shower could wait. Right now, all Zack wanted to do was get on a bike and _ride_, ride somewhere far away from all this for a while, so he figured he might as well borrow Cloud's bike and go to Healin to find out just what in Hel's name that Turk wanted from him.

If nothing else, it was bound to be a distraction, and he wanted a distraction very, very much right then.

\--

 

"Look, I'll tell him when he gets here, OK?" Tifa said, sighing slightly and fighting the urge to roll her eyes, knowing the gesture would be wasted over the phone. "If you're really in _that_ much of a hurry, I can try to call Cloud and...it has to be Zack? Why?" Tifa asked, suddenly narrowing her eyes, shifting the phone slightly. "Fine, whatever. Look, I'll...someone just came in," she said, tilting her head as she heard the sound of the door opening. "That's his bike, so that's Zack now. Yes. _Yes_. OK, I will. Good-bye," she said, and hung up in exasperation.

There was definitely something strange going on, she thought, frowning slightly. Reno hadn't sounded quite _right_. She shook her head and headed down the stairs.

"Well, it's about time you...Cloud? Where's Zack?" Tifa asked, her greeting dying on her lips, and stilling on the stairs slightly for the last few steps. She was sure that the motorcycle she had heard was Zack's, not Cloud's, but Zack was nowhere in sight.

"He...left," Cloud said, not meeting her eyes and instead sitting down on one of the stools looking at the bar counter as if studying the wood grain. "He...he went on to Healin."

Tifa's shoulders slumped, and she headed over to the counter to start wiping it down, just to keep herself hands busy. Judging by how Cloud wasn't meeting her eyes and Zack was just _gone_, even with the promise of a hot meal and a shower waiting for him, told her that however Zack and Cloud's meeting had gone, "well" was not a word that could be used to describe it.

She was honestly waiting for the day when Zack just took off. Part of her said it would never happen, because Zack wasn't that kind of person, but part of her worried.

And another part said that if Zack ever did something that stupid, she was going to track him down and kick his ass from wherever he ran off to all the way back to Midgar. She suspected that Zack, if he ever entertained the notion of trying to end the weird dance the three of them did around each other by just taking off, knew that it would probably end with his ass being kicked back to Midgar. And whatever worked, she figured, be it his own feelings, his own sense of pride, or his own sense of 'Tifa kicking my ass will hurt _a lot_,' it really didn't matter; what mattered was whatever kept him there _kept_ him there.

As strange and strained as things were sometimes, they were all they had, and they all knew time was short.

"So what happened?" she said mildly. "Zack had sounded fine on the phone."

Cloud frowned slightly. "Did he call you after he called me?"

She shook her head. "The last time I spoke to him was to tell him Reno had called, wanting to talk to him about a job. Reno just called again, but I told him I had told Zack and to hold his chocobos."

Cloud's eyes narrowed. "A job for _ShinRa_? He didn't even mention the ShinRa part. There's _got_ to be a connection," he muttered to himself.

Tifa was now very sure she was missing something. Between Reno being twitchier than she remembered him being, Cloud's being more cryptic than usual, and Zack _not_ being where the food was, something big was definitely going on, and she wanted to know what. "A connection? A connection between what?"

Cloud jolted out of his thoughts. "Yeah, that's right. You don't know what happened. Zack got attacked on his way home."

"What?!" Tifa said, dropping the rag she had been using to clean the counter. "He was _what_?! Is he OK?"

"His bike was in much worse shape than him," Cloud said, making a face, and that alone told her that Zack had been OK. "I just had to fix up a cut on him, but that bike is completely shot up and I am going to _kill_ whoever was playing with a Thunder spell or whatever it was around it," Cloud finished grouchily. "Some of the wiring is _shot_."

She shouldn't have worried, she knew, but she couldn't help it. It did explain why Cloud was on Zack's bike; Zack had probably begged, pleaded, and cajoled until Cloud gave up his keys. ...Or just asked, if the way Cloud had come in was any indication. When he looked like _that_, the way he was when he had first come in, it was usually because the two of them were running away from each other because things had gotten _awkward_.

As grateful as Tifa was to Aerith, because without whatever Aerith had done, only the gods knew what would have become of Cloud, especially with Sephiroth getting better and better at getting inside of his head, there were times when she hated Aerith for what she had unwittingly caused.

"So who attacked him and why?" she said, wrapping up the plate of food she had made for Zack.

"That's a good question. Zack had never seen them before."

"_Them_? How many where there?"

"Three."

There was something she was missing, and it left a bad feeling in her stomach. Cloud wouldn't ordinarily look that concerned about _Zack_ of all people being up against _three_ people. "What aren't you telling me, Cloud?" she said as she put the plate in the small refrigerator under the back of the counter. Getting information out of him was like extracting teeth half the time, but the direct route usually worked.

Cloud's lips tightened, like he didn't want to say it but knew he had to. "Zack thinks...Zack thinks the three people that attacked him were clones of Sephiroth."

She had just reached for the rag to start wiping off the counter where the plate had been, but she immediately gave up on that idea. "I think I need to sit down," she said faintly, both hands on the counter now to keep herself steady. _Dammit, it's over_, she thought. _It's been two years, everything is finally supposed to be _over.

But she knew it wasn't, not when Cloud kept his arm covered all the time and Zack said no beach trips to the Costa del Sol for him for a while with a grin that wasn't right. And it wasn't fair, not that they were battling Geostigma and now Sephiroth _again_ all at the same time. It just wasn't _fair_.

When her legs felt a little steadier, she decided sitting down for the rest of this conversation was going to be her best bet, and she made her way around the counter, the wooden floor boards creaking under her light steps, and sat down next to Cloud.

"Three Sephiroth clones?"

He nodded. "And he said they were calling him 'brother' and asking where 'Mother' was. They eventually drove off, but..." he started, then trailed off.

"But they'll probably be back," Tifa said, and Cloud nodded. She knew she shouldn't, she knew that, but she had to. "So what happened after Zack got back?"

Cloud flinched.

"He told me about the clones and tried to get me to fix his bike. Other than that, I don't know what happened," Cloud said, suddenly looking confused. "I...OK, things got weird. I suddenly...nothing," he muttered, shaking his head. "But Zack seemed fine, like I--_it_ hadn't bothered him. I went out to fix his bike, and when he came out, he was _different_, and things were weird enough, so I just gave him my keys," he said, and Tifa wanted to start hitting him because none of that made the slightest bit of sense even though it _did_ and she just didn't want it to, and regardless of the uneasy feeling it left her with, it didn't tell her _anything_. "And if he crashes my bike, I'm gutting him with his own Buster sword," he grumbled.

"What do you mean by 'weird'?" she finally said, ignoring the last part about gutting Zack because she heard that often enough, and picking a place to try and unravel whatever it was Cloud had been trying to say.

"Which weird?" he asked, and she recognized a stalling technique when she saw it.

"Both, but let's start from the top," she said, wishing it wasn't the middle of the day, because she had the feeling she was going to need a shot or three for this conversation. "You said things got weird, and you suddenly, but Zack seemed fine," she repeated, hoping Cloud would realize on hearing his own words exactly how little sense they had made.

Cloud didn't look at her and his face started to turn red. "Just...one of those flashes. Of memory. Aerith's," he mumbled, as if a clarification was necessary. "It makes things _weird_ sometimes."

"...I am going to ban 'weird' from your vocabulary at this rate," she said dryly, but knowing there wasn't much else she could say. A lot of things about this whole mess was 'weird,' she thought. But the problem was that the 'weird' was making a strain that she was terrified was going to break everything to pieces.

She wasn't sure if she was helping or not, but she also knew this couldn't go on, and with everything already gearing up to go down the road to the Lifestream, they might as well get this sorted out first. This had been going on for long enough, all of it, and she was getting sick of it. "Cloud, I don't really know what you mean. I just don't get it."

"You think _you_ don't get it?" Cloud said, letting out a desperate kind of laugh. "Tifa, I don't get _anything_ any more. I get those little flashes sometimes, yes, but I just don't remember much of anything. I try, and I can't. But I can remember some things, like...like I know I looked up to him," he said, frowning slightly, like he was pulling something out of his mind. "He took care of me when I was a stumbling wreck. And even before all of that, before whatever happened in Nibe--I know looked up to him. I don't know how I remember, but...the feeling is still there. Same as with you," he said, finally meeting her eyes as Tifa fought a flinch. Feelings...but almost no memories. Just like with her. "Only now..." He made an empty gesture then sighed, looking defeated and as if he had given up one words. "She loved him, you know. Aerith," he finally said, looking down at his hands, his fingers twisting in a nervous gesture that hadn't been his, once upon a time. "And her memories are all I've got most of the time."

Cloud looked so lost that Tifa had no idea what to do. Lost and _confused_, and so far from what she had dreamed he would be like when they were children.

But the past was the past, and they weren't children any more.

"And I don't know what I feel about anybody," he finally said. "You, him, _anybody_."

"Cloud," Tifa began, laying her hand on his arm and not knowing what to say but knowing she had to say something. "You know that..."

Cloud jerked away, shaking his head. "I'm...I need some air," he said, standing up and not meeting her eyes, looking instead towards to door; towards _escape_.

Tifa felt her shoulders slump, feeling like she had failed before she'd even had a chance to try and wishing she had never started this conversation at all--she should have just left things be, at least for now. But she never did, even after all this time, and Zack still chewed her out for it, saying she was trying to make Cloud into something he could never be again and maybe never had been anyway.

She'd deserve it, this time. This time, if Zack had been there to yell at her, she'd have taken it without a word in her defense; without having to bite back that maybe the one trying to make Cloud someone he wasn't wasn't just _her_. "All right. Call if anything happens."

Cloud nodded, a faint smile touching his lips. "I will," he said, and turned to walk out the door.

Marlene came running down the stairs right after Cloud had left. "I thought I heard Cloud," she said, turning her head one way then the other, as if Cloud would magically appear.

"He just left, sweetie. But...but if you run, maybe you can catch him," Tifa said, smiling and giving the girl a nod. Marlene lit up and ran out the door, speeding up as she heard the sound of a motorcycle firing up.

She hoped Marlene caught him. With any luck, Cloud would take Marlene with him, because right now she didn't think Cloud should be alone, but Tifa knew she couldn't be the one to be at his side.

Not right now, at least.

Sometimes, she wondered if she ever could.

\--

Healin Lodge was definitely deserving of its name--the air was clean and there were birds, honest under the heavens _birds_, singing all over the place, and pretty much any day but that day, Zack would have been dragging his feet about going inside. Today, though, he couldn't get inside fast enough, because inside were _answers_.

He stood outside the door and sighed, hesitating. Whatever was in there, he knew it was something he wasn't going to want to hear, and he wasn't so sure that _knowing_ was better than _not_ knowing. But not knowing could mean the planet trying to go kaboom again, and that just wasn't going to work.

He raised his hand and banged on the door, then crossed his arms to wait for someone to let him in.

"Yeah?" a voice yelled through the door. "If you're sellin' something, cram it up your--"

"Strifair Delivery, maybe at your service but probably not!" Zack yelled through the door, and heard a laugh before the door was flung open.

"'Sup, SOLDIER boy?" Reno said, grinning his old slightly manic grin, his baton tapping against his shoulder. "You sure took your sweet time."

"I was delayed," Zack said, eyeing the baton. Reno's pose, to anyone who didn't know him, looked lazy and relaxed, but Zack _did_ know him, and that lazy pose was actually when Reno was the most poised and ready to strike. That meant Reno was in battle mode, and that was _not_ a good sign.

The day, Zack thought, wanting to bang his head against something hard, seemed to be full of those.

"Oh yeah?" Reno said, raising an eyebrow, still tapping his baton slightly against his shoulder.

"Yeah," Zack said, his own stance growing tighter, more wary. "I was on my way home to a nice shower and maybe some food when some grey-haired nuts showed up," he said, watching Reno to see how he reacted.

Reno didn't disappoint him--his back went straighter and the baton slowed for just long enough to let Zack know something was definitely going on and that Reno definitely knew what.

"Man, that blows," Reno said, his voice neutral. "You kill 'em an' dump 'em by the side of the road, or what?"

"They rode off into the sunset and what did you call me for?" Zack said, crossing his arms and already tired of the run around before it had even started. "What is it you want?"

"It wasn't Reno that wants something," a voice that anyone who had ever worked for the ShinRa Company knew said softly from the doorway, the sound of a small motor and wheels catching Zack's attention before the voice, causing him to turn his head as a man in a motorized wheelchair, completely covered in a blanket, even most of his face covered or in shadow, rolled in, followed closely behind by Rude, watching Zack closely behind his sunglasses.

It was, Zack thought as his jaw fell open and his arms dropped in shock to his side and just sort of hung there, a day full of nothing but bad signs. And people coming back from the dead. Sephiroth through his freaky little clones and now _Rufus Shinra_.

"But you're dead!" he finally said.

Even from the shadow the blanket provided, Zack could see Rufus Shinra's faint smile. "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," he said with a soft, rather grim chuckle.

"Man, you're like a _cockroach_," Zack said, shaking his head and ignoring the way Rude frowned up at that. "How did you survive the ShinRa Building exploding?"

"Luck and little more," Rufus said, making a depreciating gesture with his hand. "Right before the building collapsed, I managed to--" he began, and Zack shook his head, suddenly really not wanting to hear it.

"Save it," he said, sighing. It had been too long of a day already, and there were still way too many hours in it to go. "It doesn't matter anyway. You managed to get out. I get that."

It didn't really matter, after all--all that mattered was that he was still alive. They'd all suffered; it just looked like Rufus' was a bit more physical than other's. But he was still _alive_, and not everyone had had that kind of 'luck'.

"Just tell me what it is you want," Zack said, crossings his arms again. Rufus Shinra was still alive and still had his Turks--at least two of them--so he couldn't even begin to wonder just what it was the man wanted with _him_.

Well, couldn't begin aside from the _obvious_, which was this having something to do with the Sephiroth copies. And if he knew Shinra--and _ShinRa_\--then there was no way anyone was going to come out and say what was going on; they'd just toss him out blind to a pride of bandersnatches and tell him the steak sauce they'd doused him first was just to keep the Wutai mosquitoes away and everything was perfectly safe.

"Or better yet," Zack said, narrowing his eyes, "tell me about the two guys that attacked me on my way home. One big grey-haired bruiser with an EMP'd that put those little sticks to shame," he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of Reno's baton but never uncrossing his arms, "and one long-haired kid with a big-ass gunblade."

He deliberately didn't mention the third one. He wanted to see just how much he'd be able to trust Rufus Shinra, if he was going to tell him about the little one with the frickin' sword.

"Loz and Yazoo," Rufus said, nodding faintly.

"So you do know them," Zack said, his voice flat.

"Yes. They're why we called you," Rufus, said, raising a hand to his face, Geostigma, and a pretty bad case of it, mottling the back. "The ShinRa Company owes the world a large debt. We are the ones who are responsible for the current sad state of things. We are the ones who must shoulder the burden of setting things right."

"Yeah, no kidding," Zack muttered under his breath. "And I'm listening," he said, a faint smile that held very little humor on his face. A Shinra was a Shinra, it seemed, and there always had to be a _speech_.

"As a first step, we began to investigate whatever effects Sephiroth might have left behind."

"We went out to the Northern Crater, yo," Reno said, tapping his baton against his shoulder again. "And you know what we found out there, man?"

Zack was almost afraid to ask. And he was also pretty damned sure that whatever the answer was, it _wasn't_ going to be what they told him. "What'd you find?"

"We found nothing," Rufus said, and Reno tapped his baton again like a slow, steady metronome. "So you have nothing to worry about there, at least." Rufus leaned back, as if tired. "But something occurred that we hadn't foreseen."

"That doesn't sound good," Zack said, definitely not liking where this was going or the way Reno kept tapping his baton against his shoulder. Cissnei had told him long ago, once, that Reno's baton was like a cat's tail, showing Reno's agitation as well as a warning that he was still on high alert and would attack at the slightest provocation. Rude had stony-faced bastard down and Rufus had benevolent, repentant cripple down decently well, but it was that tapping baton that gave everything away.

"It wasn't good. The same ones that attacked you got in our way. It seems that their intention is to halt what we are trying to do," Rufus said, his exposed hand tapping as catlike as Reno's baton on the end of the armrest of his wheelchair. "I have no idea at all why they're doing this."

"Oh really," Zack said, his voice completely flat. "I'm sure it's got nothing to do with them being little Sephiroth copies. And here I'd thought Genesis was the only one who could do that."

Reno went ramrod straight, and Rude's hand settled on his own baton, and that told Zack plenty right there.

"Sephiroth never had that ability and they are not Sephiroth copies. All that they are are dangerous, violent hooligans who--" Rufus began.

"No," Zack interrupted, holding up his hand and giving Rufus a disgusted look. "Just stop. I don't want to hear anymore, not when you can't be straight with me even now. So just stop. I saw their _eyes_, Rufus, and they asked me about '_Mother_.' I've _been_ down this route to crazytown, more than once, and _no, thank you_."

There was a time, Zack thought, when he would have stood there and helped them put the steak sauce on him and pointed out places they had missed. That time was long since gone, gone after too many betrayals, too many deaths, and too many lost years. "I'm not helping you," he said, shaking his head. "Do your own dirty work," he said, looking at Reno and Rude before glaring at Rufus. "You've still got your Turks, and they were better at that crap. So you don't need a SOLDIER," he finished, then turned on his heel and walked out the door.

"_Wait_!"

He slammed the door shut, hard, the sound of it so loud it silenced the birds and reverberated in the stillness.

Zack knew enough. Whatever was happening, he wanted no part of it. He knew that was a fool's wish, that he was in it up to his _eyebrows_, and he was going to have to be the one cleaning up the mess ShinRa had made, but he'd be _damned_ if he was going to be ShinRa's puppet doing it.

And he'd be doubly damned if he let anyone _die_ this time.

\--

"I think the flowers are thirsty," Marlene said, crouching next to Cloud and wrapping her arms around her knees. He looked up from Zack's bike and nodded.

"Oh? They might be. You know where the watering can is, right?"

Marlene nodded.

"OK. Go fill it and we'll give the flowers some water," he said, wiping his hands off on an oily rag. Marlene nodded again and ran off into the back of the church. Zack's bike was almost back to the way it had been before Zack had gone off and gotten it shot full of holes, but he was going to need a few more parts. He had plenty of spare parts on hand at the church, but there were a few he didn't have. He knew a good place in the old slums, though, and figured he'd head down there once he'd finished everything he could with what he had here.

If nothing else, he wanted a receipt, because Zack was _definitely_ paying for this. Ifrit's flame, he was probably going to make the bastard pay for labor, too, and maybe that way it would sink in that he should actively try to _not_ let his bike get chewed on by multifanged monsters or shot full of bullet holes, because Sephiroth clones or not, this was ridiculous. It seemed like every single time the man went out on a delivery, he came back needing so many repairs most of the fees got eaten in replacement parts.

The door to the church opened and Cloud looked up, not knowing who it could be and instinctively reaching for the bracer he'd taken off while working on the bike. His hand dropped away once he saw a girl, around Denzel's age, poke her head through. The little girl's nervous-looking eyes fell on him, and she took a deep breath and came in, a smaller boy draped over her back and walking slowly and hesitantly towards Cloud, the weight of the little boy seeming to be almost too much for her.

"Um..." she started, clutching a stuffed Moogle tightly to her chest as she spoke. "I...I heard the man who can cure Geostigma was here," she said, her voice soft. "Can you fix him? _Please_?"

Her voice sounded desperate, and Cloud's eyes went wide in startlement. "I'm sorry," Cloud said, shaking his head. _There was a rumor that--?!_ "I...I can't cure it."

"But...but he _said_!" the little girl started, clutching her stuffed Moogle closer and looking like she was a few seconds from bursting into tears. She took a deep breath and pressed on. "Everyone says that one little boy keeps getting better, for a while, and it was because of the man in the church, he said! Aren't you the man in the church? Can't you fix him, too? Please!"

"I can't cure it," Cloud said, looking down at the bike and his grimed hands. He picked up a wrench, going back to working on something he actually _could_ fix and not looking at them.

"But can't you make it _better_, even a _little_?" she said, her voice pleading. "He's...he's all I have," she whispered. "My little brother, he--, and I don't...I--" she began, and then started sniffling, biting her lip to try and stop, slow tears running down her cheeks.

"I..." he started, his hand tightening against the wrench before he dropped it and stood up. "I'll see what I can do," he said, knowing that it was _stupid_, that he shouldn't try to fix anyone with Geostigma now of _all_ times, not when it made his own react so badly; knew that he shouldn't feed the rumors that were apparently starting.

He knew that, and yet he was still walking over to them, kneeling by her and taking the boy out of her arms.

He blamed Aerith for this.

He frowned tightly at the boy--he was in advanced stages of Geostigma, probably only a few hours--_if that_\--away from death, and he understood the girl's desperation. All of the places where the Geostigma was expressed were weeping, blackish fluid oozing from his skin, and the boy was pale and clammy, his breath rattling in his chest and shaking from the pain of it, and the only thing keeping him from crying out, Cloud was sure, was the fact that he was only semi-conscious. He cursed under his breath--the boy might be too far to be helped. He probably was--usually at this point, all anyone could do was wait. But--but he had to _try_.

If nothing else, he might be able to make the boy a little more comfortable. More than that would be a miracle he just couldn't perform--that he just wasn't _enough_ to.

But he had to try. So he closed his eyes to shut everything out, and tried to _listen_.

Whenever he tried to _fix_ things, he could hear the sounds of his own blood pounding in his ears. That was the first step, somehow. But for some reason it was always different with the Geostigma, more like the sound of water hitting the shore. He _listened_, because he knew if he did, he'd be able to _hear_ what it was he was supposed to do, but it was always too faint.

He could almost always, sort of, _hear_ the planet whispering, especially in the church, and while that had been _weird_ at first he'd gotten used to it, knowing it was only a shadow of what Aerith had been able to do, and knowing that was how he could _fix_ things. But the Geostigma...the planet didn't seem to want it to be healed, and all he could ever hear was the sound not of the planet but of _water_, blocking out the whispers. No matter how hard he tried to hear past the water to hear the whispers he knew were behind it, it never worked.

It was getting really fucking annoying.

From the first he had gotten an image, one that stayed with him because there seemed to be something there even if he didn't quite know _what_ yet, of the Geostigma being burned away--of it burning through the skin and disappearing like smoke, and that was why it made a sick sort of sense to him that there was always that _water_ blocking him from figuring out how exactly to burn it away. So when he tried to _fix_ the boy's Geostigma, he focused on that idea of heat, of fire; having that in his mind, trying to boil away the water, trying to get to the whispers...

The boy let out a sharp gasp as some of the Geostigma _faded_\--not burning out like it was supposed to, but fading back, deeper into the flesh, Cloud fighting it back from the critical stages bit by bit and into what he knew was only a false kind of remission. Something was wrong, he was doing something wrong, and he pushed it more, more, just a bit more, he had to burn it out just a little bit _more_, and--

\--

"I'm really sick of these lies," Kadaj said, smiling faintly, stepping over where Rude was struggling to pull himself up, and walking around the room like an impatient, half-tamed animal.

"Very well, then," Rufus said, voice calm and not looking over. He didn't have to; he didn't need to see Kadaj pacing the room, heading towards him, to know how dangerous the man was. Rufus cursed himself, having sent Reno out after Zack. But it had seemed the most prudent course; Zack Fair would never listen to anything he had to say. But the chances were better that he would listen to Reno; if for no other reason than he had been friends with Cissnei and had worked with Tseng, Reno, and Rude in the past.

"Boss, let me talk to him, yo," Reno had said, shaking his head and staring at the door ex-Lt. Fair had slammed shut behind him. "He ain't gonna buy nothin' ShinRa is sellin', y'know? You gotta be straight with that one, 'cause he ain't gonna buy anythin' _you_ try an' tell him now. But he _knows_ me, yo. And he knows Tseng, and he's still a SOLDIER boy, y'know? And is gonna want to rush in an' play the hero to get his team's back."

"I doubt very much that he sees us as being on the same team right now, Reno," Rufus had said tiredly.

Reno rolled his eyes. "Right now, boss, it's us against the three little Sephs That Couldn't, an' Fair may look dumb, but he _ain't_. OK, scratch that, he is, but he ain't _that_ dumb."

"'The enemy of my enemy is my friend', is that what you're saying, then, Reno?" Rufus said, looking over.

"Yeah, something like that. But right now, he just sees us as the enemy, yo. So we need to, y'know, toss back a couple beers, crack a couple jokes, tell 'em our people get jacked up an' we want 'em back. He'll _get_ that. He may not trust _you_ so much, but he _knows_ us Turks don't leave our own," Reno said, eyes glittering. "Not even when we ain't got no choice. If nothin' else, Cissnei an' everything she did for him taught him that."

Rufus had realized, then, that he had gone about this the wrong way, and nodded, ordering Reno to go after Zack and that he was authorized to tell him whatever he needed to to get him to agree to assist them in cleaning up the last of the untidy mess that had been left behind, but not anything too _sensitive_. For better or for worse, they needed Zack's help, but letting too much slip could be costly.

So Reno'd given Zack time to get a good head start, and then had headed out. Rude had stayed behind, saying it was too dangerous for Rufus to be left alone, something that had been proven true not that long after Reno had decided Zack'd had enough cooling off time and had left. It seemed that not ten minutes had passed after Reno drove off before there was a strange black mist seeping in through the doors, a mist Rufus had seen before, and things _rapidly_ deteriorated.

He could only hope that Reno would be successful, and, above all else, _quick_. Rufus could stall, and nothing more, and hope it would be enough.

"I apologize for earlier, and will attempt to be more straightforward with you now," he said, voice still calm. "When we were fleeing the three of you earlier, _it_ fell out. It was sheer carelessness."

"Oh, is that so?" Kadaj said, back to Rufus, having gone still as Rufus spoke. Only now, as he questioned Rufus on this, did he begin to turn his head, almost enough for Rufus to see at least Kadaj's profile.

_If this doesn't work_ , Rufus thought, _then I will probably die here today. And I can not allow that_.

"I swear it," Rufus said, nodding even though he knew Kadaj couldn't see him.

"Then here," Kadaj said, suddenly holding two cards of some sort aloft, "swear it on these." Without looking, Kadaj flipped the cards over his shoulder and they landed directly in front of Rufus, and a kind of cold fear detonated in his stomach at the same time as a cold rage.

Two ShinRa Personnel ID cards, stained in dried blood, only the names and photos of the faces clear save for a few blood splatters.

Elena.

Tseng.

_His people ._

"_What_ are you planning?" Rufus said, his words now cold and sharp, with none of their earlier well-practiced cool congeniality.

"I need Mother's power. For the _Reunion_, you see," Kadaj said, and finally turned, and something was burning bright and insane behind his unnatural eyes.

"'Reunion'?" Rufus asked, pushing for information, pushing for time.

Kadaj began pacing the room again, more erratically than he had before, and more dangerous. His gestures were bolder, and he began to look _alive_, as if he were burning within. As if he had a _mission_.

"Yeah. _Everyone_ who got Mother's cells, we're all going to get together," Kadaj said, his face lighting up with a kind of almost ecstatic glee. "And then, we're going to have our revenge on this planet," he said, throwing out his arms and an almost childlike laugh escaping from him.

"We've been getting things ready," he said, dropping his arms suddenly, the ecstatic, almost religious fervor vanishing from his voice, and off to the side, Rude tried to raising himself from the floor, panting from the effort. "But someone's gone and hidden Mother away from us."

"Getting things ready?"

It only took a small push to get Kadaj to talk, and Rufus prayed Rude was catching every word, because while Rufus was almost beginning to resign himself to perhaps dying here at the hands of a madman, there was the chance that Rude would be able to get _out_; get to Reno and to Zack or even Cloud Strife, and give them the information Kadaj was so freely giving away.

It was a small chance, he knew--it was far more likely that the madman was only telling them because he intended to kill them both. And if so, so be it; the room was under surveillance and was capturing every word said. The end would be the same, but Rufus refused to go down easily; he would do what he could to stall for time and to perhaps save them, somehow. He had no intention of telling Kadaj where _it_ was, but if need be, he would make it clear that he was the only one who knew where it was.

Kadaj turned back to look at him, and his eyes were oddly childlike. "The 'Stigma," he said, fastening his eyes on Rufus' exposed hand, mottled with Geostigma. "But then, you know all about that, don't you, Mr. President?"

There was something highly disturbing about how _young_ Kadaj sounded, how the tone was one that was disturbingly _innocent_. There had been nothing sarcastic, nothing biting, in his words, even in his address of Rufus as 'Mr. President.' It was like before, at the top of the tower, when Kadaj's voice had gone softer, younger, as soon as he mentioned 'Mother.'

It was a weak point, a place to push--but an unstable and _dangerous_ one, and therefore a last resort.

But a weak point nonetheless.

"It's thanks to the legacy fragments of Mother within the Lifestream which are fighting so hard," Kadaj said, the moment of paradoxically innocence fading back into his mad ravings. "And despite that, despite how hard Mother's working, we...we don't know where She is," he said, and all of a sudden he was back to the inexplicable _youth_, looking almost horribly desperate, and only the faint twitching of Rufus' hand displayed the unsettled feeling running through Rufus as Kadaj paced. Reason wouldn't work, gambits wouldn't work, perhaps not even the _truth_ would work, he realized with a sinking feeling. Kadaj was too unstable, too far gone, far more than Rufus had originally thought, and the normal rules simply didn't apply.

_Make him talk , he thought. It will either calm him or make things worse. Either way, I need to know what is going on. Somehow, I've got to find out as much as I can, whether it's so I can tell Fair myself or have enough on the security tapes to warn Reno, and Fair and his band, before Kadaj kills Rude and I here, and I carry the knowledge of where that sample is with us to the Lifestream._

"But...but as _pathetic_ as it is, there's nothing we can do!" Kadaj said, once again going from childlike and needy to dangerously unstable. "Because all we are," he said, focusing on Rufus, "are just fragments of thoughts. And until we get her cells," he said, walking towards Rufus, voice and posture settling into the same deadly state he had been in before he had begun talking about 'Mother,' "we can't go back to what we were. And the 'Stigma and fragments just aren't enough! Not for a _true_ Reunion," he said, and the frightening smile was not one that was safe--and not frightening because of that, but because it was almost _sane_.

"What are you talking about?" Rufus said, his voice steady, knowing that, with as close as Kadaj was, this was probably his last gambit; his last attempt for the information he had a terrible suspicion of and had for far too long, from the first reports of the loss of his people in the crater to men with silver hair, to Zack's talk of 'Sephiroth clones', to the gleaming cat-pupiled green eyes of the madman before him. But he needed proof, needed to _know_.

The frighteningly _sane_ smile was back. "Mr. President...you already know, don't you?" he said, and walked deliberately towards Rufus. And then he knelt, head bowed and both fists pressed against the floor, and the surprise of it was enough for Rufus to lean forward, just slightly.

And when Kadaj looked up, Rufus' Geostigma flared and his hearing glitched as everything in his sight become staticky and twofold, Kadaj's face being superimposed over by someone else, by _Sephiroth_...Rufus _knew_.

\--

\--and his Geostigma _flared_, intense and sharp, so much at made his breath catch, the sound of glitches and static and a strange, familiar, and _mocking_ snort of laughter that was soon lost in the glitches filling his ears, and Cloud clutched his arm tightly, feeling the sickening dampness of the Geostigma weeping out from his skin. He clutched at his arm tightly, hoping the bandages held and that the girl, flenching and biting her lip herself, wouldn't notice.

\--

Having a Geostigma attack while riding a bike was not something Zack particularly enjoyed. He was almost back to Edge when it hit, close enough that if he'd grit his teeth and bore it, he might have been able to make it back.

But this wasn't a normal attack--he realized that when the world went blindingly white and his eyes started hurting--like they were trying to change shape. He let out a sharp cry of pain before the bike spun out of his control. He had eased up on the gas the when it attack hit because this wasn't the first time, but the bike still spun out one way and he went the other. He let out another sharp, pained cry when he hit the ground on his side, where the Geostigma was flaring, and the world flared white then greyed around the edges. And before Zack passed out, in the midst of the sound of glitches and feedback, he heard a voice he knew far, far too well--the mocking voice of a dead man.

"And here I thought you were made of sterner stuff. But in the end, you're still just a little puppy.

"You're a pup_py_...and _he's_ just a pup_pet_."

\--

The world was going slightly out of focus, sound turning into strange glitches and catches, and Cloud struggled to keep his face steady.

The little girl clutched her moogle tightly, her fingers white and breathing harder. She bit her lip, then straightened her spine, as if trying to regain the pride she might have lost at being seen weak--or like one used to hiding their own pain. "Is he--are you OK?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"I will be," he said, not bothering to lie and say he was; he knew perfectly well he wasn't and suspected she did as well. He pushed it away and looked down at the little boy, her brother, who no longer looked like he was on the verge of death.

She looked down and her face lit up when her brother let out a small noise and opened his eyes.

"Aiela?" he said softly, as if waking from sleep, and sat up slowly.

Her lip trembled and she hugged him tightly. "You're OK...You're really OK!"

They held on to each other, and she looked up at Cloud, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "You did it, you really did it! You really _can_ make the Geostigma better!"

"Don't you tell anyone!" Marlene suddenly yelled, dropping the watering tin, the water spilling out at her feet. She set her jaw and balled her hands into tight fists, and Cloud thought to himself that she was almost like a little Tifa in training, and maybe he should talk to Tifa about teaching the girl how to fight, because judging by the way Marlene's eyes were blazing, she had the instinct for it.

Then she glared at him, and he knew she wasn't _like_ a little Tifa in training, she _was_ a little Tifa in training. "You're not supposed to do that, Cloud! It makes you sicker!" she said, and Cloud decided not to bring up Tifa teaching the girl to fight because while one Tifa was fine, was great even, _two_ Tifas threatening him would be more than any one man could be expected to take.

The little girl's eyes got wide, and she noticed at last the diseased weeping from Cloud's arm, spilling out from his sleeve. "Oh--I...I'm sorry," she said, her eyes growing watery. "I didn't...I didn't mean...I'm sorry. We won't tell anybody," she said, biting her lip again, looking at her brother then back up at Cloud. "I'm sorry! But--!"

"It's all right," he said, hoping the words didn't sound as strained as they felt. And they obviously did, since the fresh tears that had been threatening finally spilled out from the child's eyes, one slow tear after another and her little brother looked around uncertainly. She looked over at Marlene, still glaring angrily at her, and she pulled her brother to his feet, and ran for the door, him clutching the stuffed Moogle and stumbling behind her, looking back at Cloud and his mouth moving as if he was trying to say something, but had no idea _what_.

The door opened just as she was getting to it and she ran straight into someone, and her brother stumbled. "I'm sorry!" she wailed, and pulled her brother up then took off past the man she had run into, dragging her brother behind. He watched the two go and made a disgusted sound, then walked into the church.

Cloud took one look at him and reached for his bracer again, because this was _not_ someone seeking rumors of a cure, that much was painfully obvious, with that black leather and grey hair. He cursed because the bracer was all he had in reach--he had his full metal staff there but it was by the materia, completely out of reach unless he took the battle over there--and the bracer wasn't equipped to be of much good in a fight; not with only three slots, and those slots being a Libra, a Curaga, and a Thundaga, and Libra telling him pretty quickly that Thundaga was useless against this one.

He had the sinking feeling, as the man stopped and made a disgusted face at the flowers and let out a sharp, "Ugh! This place reeks!", that he had just been found by one of the Sephiroth clones.

"Who are you?" Cloud asked, standing up despite the way it made his head swim and shifting Marlene behind him, to put himself in between her and the man.

"Cloud," she began, clutching the back of his shirt tightly. "C'mon. You should go home and _rest_."

"Let's play," the man said, and Cloud narrowed his eyes.

"I asked who you are," Cloud said, refusing to budge. "I'm not 'playing' with anyone I don't know."

"But I know you," the man said, lip sticking out in a pout. "You're our big brother. But you're not very big," he said, frowning slightly and sounding a little confused. Then he shrugged. "Let's play!"

"I _said_ who are you," Cloud said, narrowing his eyes.

"Man, you're _stubborn_," the man said, pouting more. "Don't you want to play?"

Cloud just glared at him.

The man heaved an annoyed-sounding sigh. "I'm _Loz_. You're big brother Cloud. And _you_ know where Mother is. Where is she?"

"Marlene, run," Cloud said softly, not taking his eyes off of Loz for an instant.

"Cloud..." she began, and he shook his head.

"_Run_."

She dropped her grip on his shirt and ran, not leaving the church but crouching by the half-empty box of materia and his staff by a collapsed pillar, and Cloud cursed to himself--there was no way he could work the fight over in that direction now. This was a battle he couldn't win, he knew that, not when he was for all practical purposes completely unarmed and still shaken from the Geostigma attack, but he had to try. And if nothing else, give Marlene time to actually _run_ if things went as bad as he knew they were going to go.

"Where's Mother?" Loz said again, ignoring Marlene and staring at Cloud.

"There's no one here, but _us_," Cloud said sharply.

"Then let's play," he said, and the grin he gave as Cloud went into a fighting stance wasn't the good kind of grin. "This is gonna be fun!"

'Fun' was not the word Cloud was thinking for how this was going to be at _all_.

Loz attacked first, and the first drive was so scarily like Sephiroth that it was almost funny, in a sick, gallows-humor kind of way. If Sephiroth had been trained to fight without Masamune, Cloud was pretty damned sure this was how he would have fought.

For some reason, part of that nagged at the back of Cloud's mind; there was something almost eerily familiar about this in a way he couldn't place. This wasn't the time to focus on it, but he trusted the odd feeling at the back of his mind when it warned him the next blow was going to be coming in from Loz's stronger armed left side.

He had no idea how it was he was keeping this even at all, other than sheer dumb luck and the odd feeling at the base of his skull. He should have, he knew, been at a disadvantage even if he hadn't had the Geostigma attack of only a few minutes prior, just because of the clone being left-handed, but for some reason, it _wasn't_; he was countering the left-handed blows as easily as if they were right-handed.

"Cloud!" Marlene yelled, and Cloud took his eyes away from Loz just long enough to see that the girl had grabbed the staff and hurled it as best she could in his general direction. He dove, grabbing it with his left hand and coming up on one knee, raising the staff in a block against Loz's weapon, then threw himself into another rolling dive, coming up on his feet and whirling to face Loz before Loz could strike him in the back.

He had sparred a lot with Zack over the last year. But the problem was that it really hadn't been sparring per se--it was almost always Zack attacking and Cloud on defense. Cloud could block pretty much anything that Zack threw at him now, and that was about as far as it went--even the materia he equipped tended to all be defensive, as it was now, with nothing offensive save the useless Thundaga. During the whole mess with Sephiroth, Zack had always instinctively put himself between whatever might be coming for Cloud, attacking for him and trusting Cloud to keep away anything coming at them until Zack could take care of them.

Zack had taught Cloud to defend himself, not to fight, and neither one of them had realized it, because they'd both had the same unconscious assumption--that if Cloud was in a position where things were attacking him, _Zack_ would either _be there_ or be on his way, and Cloud had only to fend them off until Zack came.

But right now, Cloud was on his own, Zack wasn't coming, and he had to _fight_.

"This is boring," Loz said, his lower lip sticking out slightly. "The other big brother was a lot more fun. He played _harder_."

"Sorry I'm not Zack," Cloud said, and whirled, one leg snaking out to knock Loz off balance while he raised the staff, swinging in a roundhouse aimed at the right side of Loz's face, all the while feeling like something was _off_, like his familiar grip was wrong; like he wasn't supposed to be fighting with one of the staves he had always used; that this was supposed to be a _swo_\--

Cloud didn't see Loz move until it was too late, distracted by the buzzing incongruous feeling of something being _wrong_, so he hadn't been expecting the electric shock--or for it to _hurt_ so much.

A PHS ring tone, one of the older style ones, went off, and the man answered it while Cloud tried to _move_, to gather himself enough to at least cast Curaga on himself so he could get _up_. It didn't work so well, and the strain of it caused Cloud's Geostigma to flare again, the entire world cracking sharp and staticky.

"Mother's not here, but I've got one of our brothers," the man said into his PHS. "The little big brother. And are you sure he's a big brother, Yazoo? He's the same size as Kadaj, and Kadaj isn't a big brother..."

For some reason, as the man burst into tears, right before the world crackled out and went black, Cloud had the oddest urge to tell him not to cry.

\--

"What do you _mean_, you told someone?!" Denzel yelped, his jaw dropping.

"I just told this one girl, Aiela," Jax said, frowning. "She...she was...well, you know her brother's dying, right? And she's getting worse. So I told her that somebody was making you better."

He knew that Zack was going to yell at him, and Tifa too, and maybe Cloud, but Denzel just didn't care right then. His fist came flying out and he punched Jax, hard, in the stomach. If it got out that Cloud could make the Geostigma a little better, _everyone_ would start trying to find him, and Cloud'd _try_, and then he'd get sicker and sicker and maybe he'd--

Denzel's Geostigma flared suddenly, just enough to _hurt_, an it was all too much. Denzel bared his teeth, and threw another punch.

\--

_He was all alone._

_His entire family was dead, and he was wandering and _alone. _Tired, hungry, and _alone_. He sat down, his head throbbing slightly and feeling oddly damp--when he wiped at his forehead, there was a disgusting, dirty fluid that smelled faintly of ashes, and he stared at his hand, wondering when he'd gotten so dirty. He looked up, and saw a miracle._

_In the midst of the destruction, there was a single building left standing--a broken down church. Everything else had been utterly destroyed, but it looked like it had only been abandoned. He wandered over to it, hoping there might be something inside he could take, and noticed a motorcycle. It was sleek and shiny and expensive, and two thoughts flared up--he wanted to touch it, and he wanted to see if there was something he could filch to sell off. He hadn't eaten in three days, and if there was something there, maybe--_

_The PHS dangling from where it had gotten caught by its strap made his eyes light up--it was small, it was_ new, _and it would be super easy to sell. He made sure no one was around, and grabbed it._

_He hadn't known what whim it had been, that made not take it and run but stand there and call his home phone number. He'd called, he'd known it was stupid, that there was no chance, but he'd just hoped, just had this stupid hope, that his mother would answer and he could go _home.

_Instead, all there was was a recorded voice saying_, "We're sorry, all Sector Seven numbers are unavailable."

"We're sorry, all Sector Seven numbers are unavailable.

"We're sorry, all Sector Seven numbers are unavailable.

"We're sorry, all Sector Seven numbers are unavailable.

"We're sorry, all Sector Seven numbers are unavailable."

_His head dropped and he hung up with a tired sigh. They were never coming back. _

_Everything was_ gone. _They were_ gone_. His mother would never pick up the phone, his father would never put his arm around his shoulders, and he--they were_ gone. _The stupid phone would never connect, _never.

_He raised the PHS and was about to slam it to the ground, but couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't the phone's fault he was alone. He slowly lowered his arm, and noticed a message on the screen--"1 Missed call"--and stared at it, then flipped through the call history screen._

_Every call was the same number: 7th Heaven, and only a few days between each call._

_Someone had been trying to reach someone. Somebody out there was still _alive.

_Someone out there still cared about _someone.

_So he'd dialed that number just to...well, he didn't quite know what. To hear another voice, maybe. To know that he wasn't_ alone _out here._

_It rang twice before someone picked up, and he panicked and hung up._

_The phone rang immediately, and he panicked._

_Whoever it was on the other end, they weren't going to be asking for him, and now he had a ringing phone in his hands, and no idea what to do._

_Other than, well, to answer it._

_At least this way, he'd know someone else was there._

_"Cloud?" a woman said on the other end, and her voice sounded so_ nice. _There was a faint smile in her voice at the next words. "This is a nice surprise! You almost never call! Are you OK?"_

_He had no idea what to say._

_"Cloud?"_

_"No, it's not him."_

_"Who are you?" the woman asked, starting to sound concerned. "That's Cloud's PHS, right?"_

_"I don't know," he said, his throat getting tight. This was another person who didn't know him, didn't want him, was looking for someone else, and all of a sudden everything hit him at once, that there was no one left to care about him the way she did 'Cloud'._

_"Who are you?" she asked again, and all he could say was "I don't know." He didn't know, he didn't know anything any more, and his mind was in a panic. A tear fell down his face, and then more and more, and the words started spilling out. He was tired of being_ alone, _of being_ scared, _and he wanted someone to tell him what to do, someone to make it all _better_ again. "I don't know what to do!"_

_"Are you crying?" the woman said, and her voice was so _gentle, _like she_ cared, _and all he could do was cry harder, wiping at his eyes with a dirty hand._

_That was when everything went_ wrong. _When it felt like the world was spinning, and his hearing was full of strange noises, and it_ hurt. _He let out a pained cry, clutching at his head and dropping the PHS. It_ hurt, _it hurt more than anything_ ever _had, more than he thought_ anything _could, and his legs buckled out from under him._

_"What's wrong? Are you OK?!" the woman on the other end cried out, but everything hurt too much, his head hurt, his head was pounding, throbbing, like it was trying to rip itself apart--_

_"Cloud! Cloud! Are you there?!" the woman yelled, and he stared at his hand, covered in that brownish black stuff from before, the color of drying blood, only now there was so much it covered his whole hand, and more was dripping down his face and splashing on the ground, like he was bleeding, only it wasn't _blood, couldn't _be blood, blood wasn't that color when you were bleeding, it was_ wrong _it was_\--

_The world began to spin and go white, and then_ black.

\--

"Ow! You stupid--!" Jax yelled, and then they were _fighting_, full on _fighting_, before another little boy ran up.

"You two dummies quit it!" he yelled. "I got _news_! There's a guy who says he can fix it! He can fix the 'Stigma!"

Denzel and Jax stopped fighting almost instantly, Jax bouncing as Denzel went cold.

"C'mooooon, we have to go!" Tyler said, grabbing both of them by an arm. Before he _leaves_."

Denzel allowed himself to be dragged along, having a horrible feeling that whenever they got where they were going, Cloud would be there.

It wasn't Cloud.

There was instead a truck, full of children with bandages dirtied with Geostigma, and one man with long, grey-hair who seemed to be in charge. Denzel had never seen him before.

"_C'mon_," Tyler said, giving Denzel a look before running over to the truck.

Denzel stood there, staring at the truck. He had no idea who they guy was or where he was taking them, but...but he had this image, of Cloud so pale he looked like a ghost, big, huge bags under his eyes like bruises and the Geostigma weeping from his arm. Cloud had tried so _hard_ to fix him, and it was making Cloud worse, and if this guy could cure the 'Stigma, then he'd _never_ have to ever see Cloud like that again.

He set his jaw and headed towards the truck.

\--

When Zack came to, he got on the bike and said a prayer of thanks to Carbuncle that the thing just looked a little scratched and banged up, and headed straight for home as quickly as he could, pushing the last jitteriness of the Geostigma attack away and not bothering to call en route because all of this needed to be done face to face and he just wanted to go _home_. By now, he figured, Cloud had to have gotten Zack's bike in decent shape and was already home or could be called to get there _quickly_\--he needed to talk to both Cloud and Tifa so they could figure out what to do, because this was bigger than he'd been afraid it was.

"How'd it go?" Tifa asked him as soon as he walked in.

He sat down heavily in a chair. "That," he said, thudding his head against a table, "went about as well as anything involving anyone from ShinRa ever will."

He didn't mention the Geostigma attack--they all knew how bad it was, the last thing he needed just then was to add one more problem to the pile, and bandages could be changed later.

"That well, huh?" Tifa asked, unwrapping the plate of food from before and setting it to reheat. "And you should eat something. You look like you need it."

"...Tifa, you are the best thing ever. Marry me and take me away from all this," he said, giving her a grateful look.

She rolled her eyes, but was smiling. "You spoke to your mother recently, didn't you?"

He groaned. "Don't remind me. She _refuses_ to give up. You want to know why my last phone bill was so high..." He groaned again. "She's never, ever going to shut up, is she?"

"She's making up for lost time, Zack, so not until you're married with kids, no," she said with a chuckle. "And don't even _look_ at me," she said, giving him a look.

"We've already got the kids!" he said, grinning. "Halfway to no more nagging mother! C'mon, don't you want to help lower my phone bill and save my sanity?"

"What sanity?" she said, chuckling. "When did you _ever_ have that?"

"OK, fine, save my poor wallet! Phone bill! You saw that last phone bill!"

"Eat your food, Zack," she said, laughing and shaking her head, and Zack deflated.

"Mom's right, I'm never getting married," he said, shoulders slumping dejectedly. He perked up suddenly. "Hey, I know! Maybe I'll just ask Cloud, I'm sure he'd say yes..."

Tifa dropped the plate in front of him with a bit more force than was necessary and the smile she had had too many teeth for a split second. "Cloud would make a _terrible_ wife. He tracks dirt in all over everything worse than you do and he would burn _water_, remember? You'd never have a decent meal ever again for the rest of your life."

"Shit, you're right. I'm never getting married!" he wailed and buried his face in his hands. "My mother will never stop nagging me, ever!"

"There, there," she said, patting his head. "Eat your dinner before it gets cold."

"Yes'm," he said, mock-dejectedly, and then couldn't keep a straight face any longer and grinned. "You sure you don't wanna marry me?"

"...Eat or else I take your food away from you."

"Yes'm," he said and started eating, because with Tifa, you never quite knew when she was serious with her threats, but a good bet was that she was, because she tended not to make idle ones.

"Hey, speaking of Cloud, where is he?" Zack said when he'd gotten about halfway through. "Please tell me he's on his way here."

"He went back to the church," Tifa said, but she had gotten that mouth-tightening look, and Zack could guess that things here had gone about as well as they had with him and Cloud earlier.

"You wanna call him and tell him to come back here? I need to talk to both of you about what happened in Healin," he said, putting his fork down and getting serious. He realized belatedly he should have told her that before, but he was tired, hungry, and still feeling scrambled from the Geostigma attack. Sitting down and getting some food in him--and getting a distraction by talking about something not this mess had helped a lot and now he felt like he could get down to business.

"Right," she said, nodding. "He should be coming back soon, since Marlene went with him, but..."

"Call him anyway," Zack said, nodding.

"Gotcha."

"And hey, where's Denzel?" Zack said, realizing how quiet the place was.

Tifa sighed. "Hiding from Cloud, I think. His Geostigma is getting worse."

Zack rubbed his face tiredly. Denzel couldn't hide his Geostigma, so when it started getting bad, he tended to try and hide _himself_ to keep from accidentally setting off Cloud trying to kill himself looking for a way to heal the kid. "When he gets back, we've got to put a stop to that. Especially now. I don't want him or Marlene wandering around unsupervised. Did Cloud tell you I got attacked on the way home before?"

She nodded. "And that you thought they were clones of Sephiroth."

"I'm pretty fucking sure they are," he said, his hand tightening around his fork so hard that it bent. "I don't know how much those three Sephiroth copies know about us, but they know enough that it's dangerous."

"You don't think--" she began.

"I don't _know_," Zack interrupted, before she could even finish. "All I know is Sephiroth copies, 'Mother', something about the Northern Crater, and Rufus Shinra is alive and lied to my face about all of it."

"Freya bless," Tifa whispered, looking stunned.

"Yeah," Zack said, since that summed up the whole situation pretty well, and he tried to straighten out the fork. "So call Cloud, and get him here quick."

She nodded and headed up the stairs. Zack hurriedly finished eating, and had just starting washing his dishes because he had to do something that wasn't sitting there like a lump when Tifa came back down.

"No answer," she said, coming back behind the counter and leaning against it.

"Figures," Zack said, and pulled out his PHS. He dialed Cloud's number quickly and tucked the phone under his ear as he washed. The phone rang and kept on ringing before he was finally bumped over to voice mail. "Yo, Cloud. Answer your phone!" he yelled as a message, then redialed.

"Aaaaaand he's not picking up," Zack said, making a face and hanging up when he went to voice mail for the third time.

"That's Cloud for you," Tifa said, sighing. "You'd think he had no idea what a PHS _was_, let alone how to use it."

"One of these days," Zack said, shaking his head, "I am going to sit Cloud down--sit _on_ him if I have to--and tell him that when the phone rings he needs to _answer_ it. And if there's a message, he needs to _call back_."

"And we should revoke his silent-mode privileges," Tifa said, nodding. "That way he can't ignore the phone and say he didn't notice it."

"And put on the loudest, most obnoxious ring tone the phone company ever came up with, and turn on the 'kiddie lock' so he can't change it," Zack said, warming up to everything they could do to make Cloud start answering his phone.

"I'm thinking maybe the Iraira-man theme song," Tifa said, her eye almost twitching at the very thought of the theme song to the single most _ridiculous_ TV show she'd ever seen and that Marlene was positively addicted to, an addiction Zack didn't help by watching it with her every Saturday morning, the two of them singing the theme song at the top of their lungs, doing the stupid poses and _everything_. At _six AM_. Cloud hated it as much as she did, if not more, and had threatened more than once to dig out a Thundaga and blast the television into the Lifestream.

"Oh, that'd be _perfect_. There's no way he can ignore that. He'd have to answer the phone just to make it stop ringing. I think we've got a plan," Zack said conspiratorially, holding his fist out.

"Agreed," she said, making a fist and lightly bumping his, giving him a grin in return. She sighed suddenly, as if reality had just come back. "Do you want me to go out and look for Denzel while we wait for a miracle to happen and Cloud to finally answer his phone or call back?"

Zack frowned. "We need to get that kid a PHS, too."

"So then we can have two people in the house who never answer?" Tifa said, shaking her head. "At least if Denzel doesn't have one, we can tell ourselves that he's off somewhere and he doesn't know we want to talk to him, not that he's off somewhere avoiding everyone and brooding."

"The two of them are peas in a pod," Zack said, putting his face in his hands. "I am so not surprised they found each other. The Brood Vortex or something. Anyway," he said, trying to get his train of thought back on the rails. "About Denzel," he started, when the door to the bar flew open.

"Yoo-hoo, anybody hooooome?"

"Oh, gods," Zack said, putting his face in his hands. He really didn't need this right now. "It never ends."

\--

_"Hey--!"_

_When he started to open his eyes, his breath fast and heart still racing, he saw a man running over to him, then kneeling down and stretching out a hand. "You OK?"_

_Everything went black again, but when he woke up this time, he was being carried--strong hands had him under his arms and he was being carried at arms length, almost gingerly. It hurt to open his eyes, it hurt to move, and he was tired. And it hurt so much. His hands were shaking, everything was shaking, and the pain just wouldn't stop. He let out a faint, pained sound, and the man froze halfway through setting him on the bike. The man sighed softly, then set him down on the bike. He wasn't there long, though--the man used the bike to settle him, then picked him up again, this time cradling him, in a way he could only just remember, the way his mother had when he was still little enough to, and he gave up trying to hold his head up and dropped it against the man's chest, and let himself shake._

_The man seemed to startle slightly, tensing up, but it was only for a moment. _

_And then they were moving, the man's gait quick but somehow not jarring, as if he was trying to move as smoothly as possible. "Inside," he said, and it was the voice from before, asking him if he was OK. He didn't react, just closed his eyes and let the man take him where he would, just wanting someone to make it a little better, to tell him what to do and make things OK._

_He let himself be carried into the church, and the blond man kept him in his arms even after they got inside and he sat down on the floor. _

_He could smell something, something sweet and faint and not like anything he had ever smelled before, something almost like perfume._

_The man's hand covered his, stilling the shaking, and Denzel let himself drift, knowing that, at least for now, he wasn't_ alone.

\--

"Aww, now what kinda greeting is that?" Reno said with a mock pout.

"What do you want now?" Zack said with a groan, face still buried in his hands.

"I just came to have a couple words. See if I could persuade you a little," Reno said, sitting down at the counter as if he did it every day, and grinning. "I got some info for ya."

Zack sighed, feeling a headache coming on. "Info. Right. Are you going to tell me something useful this time? If not, just leave," Zack said, narrowing his eyes. Tifa had gone on guard, her arms crossing as she gave them a cold look Zack was mighty proud of. She didn't even completely know what had happened at Healin, but she knew enough to have his back, and he appreciated that.

"The Forgotten City, yo," Reno said, a maniac little smile on his face. "That's where the three of 'em got their base."

"The clones?" Tifa asked, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head slightly, and Reno nodded.

"Almost got it. But they ain't--" Reno began, and Zack cut him off.

"'Clones'? Figures," Zack said, rolling his eyes. He got as far as opening his mouth to ask Reno what besides that steak sauce for Zack to make bandersnatch bait of himself that Reno had for him when Marlene burst into the bar. She looked around, a huge bruise on her temple, and bee-lined past all of them straight for Tifa, who had taken one look at Marlene and had gone _over_ the counter to get to her, her foot almost stomping on Reno's hand and as she went, his hand saved only by Reno snatching it out of the way with a sharp, "Hey, watch it, yo! I _need_ that hand!"

They all ignored him, and Marlene burst into tears as soon as she saw Tifa, calling out Tifa's name in a long wail, and Zack just got out of both of their ways.

"Well, looks like you got your own problems right now," Reno said, standing up and looking at the crying child nervously. "Look, I got a _lot_ of stuff to tell you, all right? I'm bein' straight here. We need your help, an' you _know_ I wouldn't be here otherwise." He pulled out a card with a number on it. "_Call_, yo. When you don't got the cryin' kid thing happenin'."

"Fine, whatever," Zack said, taking the card.

"Serious, yo," Reno said softly, and Zack frowned at how serious the man had gotten. "Those three, they're real damn dangerous. It's kinda worse than you think, maybe."

"I'll call you," Zack said, nodding, because Reno _was_ serious, and if he'd had his baton in hand Zack was damned sure it'd be tapping up and down, sure as a metronome.

Reno frowned for a second over at Marlene, who was beginning to say _something_ incoherently to Tifa that Zack couldn't make out at all, then Reno shook his head with a faint curse that Zack hadn't heard since Wutai, and headed out.

\--

Denzel raised his head from his arms and looked up, stared at the everything going past as the truck sped through the desert outside Midgar. He wondered, for a moment, who it was that was going to heal them.

...It didn't matter, really, he thought, and buried his face back in his arms. All that mattered was someone would heal him, and then he could save Cloud this time.

\--

"Marlene, sweetheart, you've got to calm down," Tifa said, on one knee to be level with Marlene and trying to calm the girl. "I can't understand what you're saying if you don't."

"The--the big scary man--he, he--And then he did something and then Cloud fell and then he took Cloud away!"

Zack felt the blood draining out of his face. He had no idea what Marlene had said before that point, but 'big scary man' and 'took Cloud away', those weren't things that gave him the warm fuzzies. In fact, they kind of gave him the cold icies.

"_What_?" Tifa said. "_Who_ took Cloud?"

"The big scary man!" Marlene said, fresh tears running down her face.

"Marlene, what did the big scary man look like?" Zack said, coming over and dropping down to Marlene's height.  
 "He was big," she said, sniffling and wiping her eyes. "And he hated the flowers. He said they were smelly." She swallowed. "And he was wearing all black."

"Did he have grey hair?" Zack said, already knowing the answer. Marlene nodded and Zack cursed. "You said he took Cloud?"

She nodded. "He...he had a weapon that made lightning," she said, her eyes wide and breath catching. "He shocked Cloud and then he _took_ Cloud. He picked him up and took him _away_."

Zack jumped to his feet so fast it almost made him dizzy. "Shit. Those Sephiroth clones, they've got _Cloud_?!"

Tifa's face was as bloodlessly pale as he guessed his own was. "They've...they took Cloud. Sweet Shiva, they took Cloud."

"It was only one," Marlene said, blinking. "The big, scary guy."

"Only one?" Tifa said, looking shocked.

"But there are three of them. So where in Hel's name were the other two?" Zack said, not liking this at all.

"Denzel," Tifa whispered, her face growing paler. "The heavens help us, where's _Denzel_? Zack, they knew about you, they knew about Cloud, they knew about the _church_...it seems like they knew Marlene, too. What if they--?"

Zack swore, fleetingly. "Dammit, I should have _been_ there. I should've either made Reno come here or taken Cloud with me. I _knew_ those Sephiroth clones were out there and targeting us," he said, his hands clinching into fists. "I shouldn't have left him alone."

Tifa looked stunned, but slowly turned to look at him, her face bloodless. "You shouldn't have..." She suddenly let out a strange, choked-off laugh. "Maybe," she said, still making odd-sounding, desperate laughs, "what you _should_ have done was taught him how to fight in the first place. You're right, Zack. This _is_ your fault." All of a sudden the desperate hysteria she had seemed about to fall into faded, replaced with something else, with a kind of rage she turned on the only one there that she could rage at. "_One_ of those bastards took him out because _you're_ the one who let him get by not knowing how to fight," she said, her words getting sharper and louder, her entire body starting to tremble with a pent-up rage that had been slowly building over the last year. "He's been through as much of that SOLDIER process as you have; there's _no_ good reason he shouldn't have been able to handle one of those clones! No other reason than you've been babying him this entire last year!"

"I've been--_babying_\--Mimir's blessing, Tifa!" Zack yelled, not knowing where this was coming for and not caring, his own frayed nerves snapping. "Have you _missed_ me trying to teach him how to do something besides stay in the back and throw Cures and Restores?! In case you _missed_ it, he doesn't exactly have that fighter's instinct anymore!"

"And whose fault is that?" Tifa said, her eyes narrow and her voice ice cold.

"Don't you dare try to blame this on Aerith," Zack said in a low hiss, putting his hands on his hips and not able to believe they were having this fight now. "If it wasn't for her and whatever she did, Cloud--"

"Who said anything about _Aerith_, Zack?" she said, and there was something a little too sickly sweet in her voice. "I know, she's in his head and now he half thinks he's her. And I won't deny he's a healer now, better than anyone _anywhere_ on the planet. But _before_ he was, he was _Cloud_, and he used to dream about being a SOLDIER so he could protect people."

"You mean protect _you_," Zack said with a snort.

Tifa narrowed her eyes. "Protect the _people he cared about_. And he still remembers feelings even if everything else is fuzzy, so don't try to tell me that _instinct_ isn't still there, buried somewhere deep where he's still _Cloud_. All it would have taken was some digging to get it to come back out. Digging you won't do and won't let me do, either. Every time I try, you _block me every step_ of the way," she half snarled, her voice tight with anger. "Even when I just try to talk to him about home! _Every time_ it looks like he's starting to remember something, _anything_, about Nibelheim, you--you fucking find some way to change the subject or distract him or me and you _block me_ trying to get Cloud back!

"So you know what, Zack?" she said, a strange smile on her face and something about her voice _deadly_ in the sickly-sweetness that had returned to it, "I don't really think you want him to be able to do anything but depend on you. I don't think you _want_ him to ever go back to being _Cloud_. I think you _want_ him to stay like he is. Dependent on _you_ to protect him and just. Like. _Aerith_.

"So I wonder what that says about _you_," she finished, a small, tight smile curling her lip and her eyes narrowed.

"_You_\--" Zack started, so angry he was seeing red now, because where did Little Miss Pushy _Tifa fucking Lockheart_ of all people get off--didn't she get that it was dangerous for Cloud to try and remember Nibel--and what the _fuck_ was she insinu--

"Why are you two fighting?!" Marlene suddenly yelled, her breath catching. Tears were streaming down her face and her lip was trembling as she stared at the two of them. "He took _Cloud_ and you're _fighting_ and what if he hurts him _more_ and aren't you going to go save him? Why won't you go save Cloud?!" she said, her voice turning to sobs as she tried to wipe her tears away. "Why...why won't you stop fighting and go save Cloud?"

Marlene took another breath and started another torrent of words and tears, looking at them like they had just used the black materia on her world.

"Cloud tried to fix the little boy with Geostigma a girl brought him even though it makes him sicker and then the big scary man came and fought him and when I threw the materia at him he just smiled and pushed me and it hurt when I hit the pew and then he took the materia and he took Cloud and now you're fighting and I don't want you to fight! I want you to help _Cloud_!"

Tifa and Zack both looked at each other as what Marlene said sunk in.

"He tried to--!" Zack started.

"A little boy with--!" Tifa let out at the same time.

"That...that fucking idiot," Zack cursed under his breath. "Now, of all fucking times! Shit," he said, shaking his head. "I'm going to find Mimir's Well and dunk his gods-bedamned _head_ in it until he's got some sense in there!"

He gave Tifa a sharp, bitter look. "Y'know, you say you think I want him to be more like Aerith, but right now his being like her is _not_ exactly something I'm enjoying," he said, because trying to fix a kid with Geostigma even though it left him an exhausted wreck and barely did anything more than help for a few weeks at the most, _that_ was so Aerith it made his head hurt. Aerith had had a good head on her shoulders, whenever trying to _fix_ people wasn't involved, and when it was, her _heart_ took over and _self-preservation_ went flying out the window. And that was why she was dead and Cloud was with the clones of Sephir-- "Oh _shit_, I have got to go find Cloud," he said, his eyes getting wide.

"I'm going with you," Tifa said, setting her jaw.

"No, you're not. You're staying here," Zack said flatly, shaking his head.

"_Excuse me_?! What, rushing off to save your princess again?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "I hate to break it to you, but you're no _hero_ and _we_ don't need you to protect us. If you think I can't handle--" she yelled, her hands balling into fists.

"That's not it!" he yelled sharply, slamming a backhanded fist into the wall so hard in frustration that cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact, the noise from it so loud Marlene jumped, jolted out of her tears.

Tifa didn't even flinch.

"Look, I don't know _what_ has set you off, but right now, we _don't have time for it_! _I_ am going and _you_ are staying here not because of whatever twisted _crap_ you're thinking of but because we don't know who or even _what_ exactly we're up against, and we can't risk _both_ of us, _not_ with those kids!" Zack yelled, pointing at Marlene, who was staring at them wide-eyed, her lower lip trembling as if she was about to start crying again. "They _need_ at least one us here and you _know_ that! Neither _one_ of them can afford to lose everyone again!" he yelled, and then took a deep breath because, Ifrit's flame, the last thing he wanted to do was make Marlene start crying again. "We can't both go haring off, and you _know_ I've got a better chance against those three. And if something goes _wrong_, I need someone who knows where I am and can come bring backup and a _lot_ of it.

"Tifa, I'll bring him back," Zack said, his voice harsh. "You _know_ I'll bring him back or die trying. This isn't about being a fucking hero, this isn't about you, this isn't about me, and this sure as Shiva isn't about _Aerith_. This is about _Cloud_ and the fact that _right now_, only the gods know what's happening to him because those three Sephiroth freaks have him! So I need you to _stay here_, find Denzel, and get a hold of everyone from before so we're not in this alone because this is _big_. _Please_. You're the planner, not me. I'm the rush-in-and-break-things-er, so let me go do it and bring Cloud _home_," he pleaded.

"Dammit," Tifa said, looking away and swallowing thickly. "I _hate_ when you do those puppy eyes and I hate it more when you're _right_," she said, blinking quickly. She rubbed her eyes, biting her lip to keep from bursting into angry, frustrated tears, because he was right and someone had to stay behind and he was right that it had to be _her_. "Go. Go get him. Bring him home and in one piece or I'm going to kill you myself."

"I'm on it," he said with a shaky grin, putting a hand lightly on her shoulder and squeezing, the gesture more tentative and fleeting than it would have been an hour before but still one he had to make, and he took off at a run.

The last thing he saw, as he jumped on his bike and slammed the key into the ignition, the door to the bar still swinging open because he hadn't bothered to even shut it in his mad dash out, was Marlene running back to Tifa, and Tifa dropping down to gather the girl in a tight hug.

Then the door finished its arc; swung back and latched shut, and Zack knew a sign when he saw one.


	3. Part the Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Great, we're screwed!

It was nightfall when Cloud woke. His head was pounding and his arm felt disgusting, the bandages in desperate need of changing damp and heavy against his skin, and he was jittery and disoriented on top of all of that. But for some reason, for all he felt _physically_ uncomfortable with something jammed into his stomach and blood rushing in his ears, it was oddly _familiar_, and on some level almost comforting.

And then came the realization that he was slung rather unceremoniously over someone's shoulder and was staring upside-down straight at that someone's leather-clad ass.

This...was _not_ the way he wanted to wake up.

"Put me down," Cloud snapped, not knowing if it would work and not caring. He didn't know where he was or what was going on, but he'd already had enough.

"Oh. You're awake," a low voice said somewhat slowly, and the pieces started coming back together. He had no idea where he was yet, but at least he knew whose leather-clad ass it was he was stuck staring at, sort of. He raised his head to try and figure out where it was, and the instant he saw the trees, it was almost painfully clear. Crystalline trees like _that_ only grew one place, after all.

He considered trying to get free, maybe kicking the guy or something, and decided quickly that it would be a bad idea. Assuming the huge guy carrying him even _felt_ it, Cloud knew he wouldn't get far. He was barely at even twenty percent--between the two Geostigma attacks, trying to heal that dying boy, and the fight, he was in no shape to do anything but his best imitation of a sack of potatoes.

That, and stare upside-down at this guy's leather-clad ass.

...This was _not_ shaping up to be his day.

"If you won't put me down, at least tell me who in Hel's realm you are," Cloud said grumpily.

"But I _told_ you already. At the church. Loz. I'm _Loz_."

Everything came slamming back when he heard the name again, so at least he knew how he got to be staring a leather-clad ass as well as _whose_ leather-clad ass it was: some guy named Loz. Some _Sephiroth-clone_ named Loz.

This was _really_ not a way he ever wanted to wake up.

"Are you going to put me down?" he asked shortly.

"No," Loz said. "No, no, _yes_. But, _no_. Not yet. No, _then_ yes."

Cloud blinked. _And Hojo called me and Zack failed clones_, he thought, making a face. _They were scraping the bottom of the barrel this time_.

_Be nice_, am amused voice said in his head, and he rolled his eyes. He'd be 'nice' when he was no longer upside down and with his head level with Loz's ass.

"Is our big brother awake?" a softer voice said, one that instantly put Cloud on edge. It was familiar, but _not_\--one he had never heard before and yet somehow knew in a way he couldn't place.

"He's awake, but he's not very big. Are you sure he's a _big_ brother?" Loz said, and Cloud felt the strangest urge to at least _try_ and kick him. He knew better, of course, but at least consoled himself with the fleeting image of his boot in Loz's stomach.

"Bring him here," the softer, younger voice said, and Cloud really found himself wishing he could see what the guy looked like--it had to, after all, beat the view of Loz's leather-clad ass.

_If I don't stop focusing on his ass, I'm going to kill myself_, Cloud thought. _OK, this is not the worst ass I could be stuck staring out and I guess it's a nice ass. It's pretty toned, and the leather works and all to really show off the shape and...oh, by the gods, I am losing my fucking mind_. "Put me _down_, Loz!" he snapped again, using the tone of voice that always worked well with Denzel and Marlene.

Loz startled and let out an uncertain, "Ah--Oh-OK," and Cloud found himself dumped rather unceremoniously next to the half-filled box of materia that had been with him at the church.

And a teenager, one who looked about fifteen or sixteen at the most, holding a bluish materia that looked uncomfortably like a Mastered Thundaga in his hands, looked down at him with a faint smile. "You hid these. You and our other brother."

Well, now he knew whose voice that had been before. "I'm not your brother. Neither is Zack," Cloud finally said.

The clone shook his hair out of his face and his faint smile widened, and that more than anything else told Cloud exactly how dangerous he was. That was _Sephiroth's_ smile, pure and simple, only there was something slightly less grounded, something more desperate and wild about it. Sephiroth had been insane, but _this_...this was something wholly different, something more unstable than Sephiroth had ever been.

When Sephiroth smiled, you always knew what it meant--that Sephiroth figured he had you right where he wanted you--but this didn't seem to have that cunning, deadly strategy behind it. This was more unfocused threat, and by the sheer nature of how unfocused it was, more dangerous. It was random violence compared to carefully planned-out menace.

And something about it _resonated_\--something inside Cloud wanted to coil up and wrap around the jittery menace; find the clone's weak points and press them until they fractured and then reshape and _focus_ that potential into something _deadly_, make of it a weapon, and Cloud recoiled away from that inexplicable urge.

"Yes," the clone said, with his mad little smile, tilting his head sharply to move the hair out of his eyes. Green eyes, familiar, materia green and slit-pupiled. "You are. And you tried to keep these from us. These little presents from the Lifestream."

"Seeing as they're not yours and we had to work our asses off to Master them, yes. We _did_ try to keep them out of your hands," Cloud said shortly. "Whoever you are," he tacked on, keeping his voice annoyed.

There was something wrong. There was something very, very wrong, and it wasn't just with the situation, and Cloud felt something in him almost desperately grasp at keeping himself _separate_. Sarcasm and aloofness had long ago grown to be something protective and a way of coping with the desperate insanity going on around him and the polar unbalance _inside_ him, and he _grasped_ for it now; a cool exterior to cover how something inside of him was panicking at the way something about the clone _needled_ him, needled something that had been sleeping and far from the surface, but now wanted to wake.

The clone laughed. "Oh, yes, introductions! Since we're all family, I just forgot. I know you, after all," he said, moving around suddenly in quick, fluid and yet somehow almost disjointed movements, as if being still were too much for him but fluidity was not natural and had been trained into him. His movements were loose and controlled but _unfocused_, much like the boy's thoughts seemed to be.

_He is not sane_, Cloud thought, staring at the him. _ I have a dead Ancient in my head and I swear the damn flowers in the church try to talk to me, and I'm more sane than him. This is not good. It is not good when I am the least crazy person in the area_.

And all the while, another part of him was watching, _analyzing_, and it put him at unease.

"I'm Kadaj," the clone said, still holding the materia, then somehow, amazingly and somewhat terrifyingly, sliding the materia _into_ his arm. His little smile grew satisfied as there was a flair of blue through his arm. "And thank you for your gift, brother. We'll put it to good use."

"...You owe me 500,000 gil for that," Cloud said flatly. "So pay up or give it back."

Kadaj threw his head back and laughed, and that somehow disturbed Cloud even more than the crazy smile. That laugh disturbed him not because it was insane--it was that it was _young_. It was so young it was out of place; everything about Kadaj's sudden, full-body amusement was, and that combined with how Loz had reacted...there was something that wasn't _right_, something that didn't add up, and whatever that missing piece was, it seemed like it was the key to understanding everything.

_What is wrong with them?_ he wondered. _There's something...not all there, but not in just a crazy way. None of the clones were like this, ever. So what in Hel's realm--a degradation of Hojo's 'samples' or something? A new process?_

_No_, a small voice whispered, his voice but not. The voice that was always separate but never apart; slightly outside but integrally a part of him, something that both felt like it had always been apart of him and yet never had been at all. It followed the trail of his thoughts, followed the bits and pieces and had of information, and talked its way through understanding them and putting them together. _They're...they're not clones, not like Hojo tried with you and Zack, and not like all the SOLDIERs who became clones. They're...they're more like fragments, really. They're so incomplete and broken, and are just parts that can't be whole. Can't you feel it?_

He nodded imperceptibly to himself, as that suddenly clicked into place, as so much that was unsettling about them made _sense_. Why they seemed not all there--because they weren't.

But that didn't explain--didn't _begin_ to explain--why something in him stirred, _reacted_, wanted to seek out more information from them, something that seemed as much a part of him and always had been as the rest of him--it was something like the way he reacted to the church, to the garden there, something separate and yet _comfortable_, and now it was _stirring_\--

He pushed it down and _away_\--later. _Later_. Whatever it was, whatever was moving the same way as something moved when he was in the church, now was not the time for it or introspection or figuring out his fragmented head, because now was the time for focusing on _not getting killed_.

"We don't have 500,000 gil, Kadaj," Loz said, sounding slightly worried, and Cloud frowned faintly, distracted from the second strands of thought. Saying something like that...it was almost as if...

"It's a joke, Loz," Kadaj said, shaking his head. "Our brother would never keep anything from us, would he?" Kadaj said, and suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, Kadaj was back to being dangerous.

"You forgot to introduce the other, uh, one, wherever he is. I heard there were three of you," Cloud said mildly, crossing his arms and drumming the fingers of his left hand on his bicep, hoping that would derail Kadaj's crazy train before it left the station. The strangeness from before was fading; the sleeping thing inside him settling back into a silence that was easier to ignore. He remembered, vaguely, in a hazy, fading nightmarish way, when Sephiroth had tried to take him over before, and found himself wondering if Kadaj had some of those same abilities as Sephiroth, only far more nascent and undeveloped. It would explain, he thought, why something had reacted, at first. Sephiroth himself hadn't been able to completely take over Cloud, but there had to be...remnants of the attempts, and maybe that, Cloud thought, was what had reacted.

It made as much sense as anything, as anything _could_, and he left it at that. Whatever that feeling had been, it was _fading_, and that was _enough_.

"Yazoo," Kadaj said faintly. "And don't worry, he's coming."

"Did Mother leave these for us? Is that why our little big brother is giving them to us?" Loz said, breaking in impatiently.

Cloud felt his eye twitch. It was oddly comforting, that annoyance, and, more importantly, oddly _settling_.

"Of course," Kadaj said nodding, and Loz crouched down to go through the materia more enthusiastically. Then Loz stopped short.

"Is he hiding Mother, too?" he said, shooting Cloud a venomous look, and Cloud was instantly reminded of just how dangerous Loz was as well. He had somehow managed to forget, in the brief exchange when he woke up and the moments since, that Loz had beaten him without so much as breaking a sweat, and was obviously just as hair-trigger as Kadaj. Loz may have seemed childlike, but his 'playing' was deadly.

"No," Kadaj said, still looking at his hand surrounded by blue magic as if caught mid-cast, and it was painfully obvious that "mid-cast" would give away to "cast" sooner rather than later.

Cloud did not want to be the one in the way when that change happened. He went tense, ready to move at the slightest hint of Kadaj turning his way. "It's that company."

Kadaj dropped his arm, the palpable energy in the air of the uncast spell fading, but none of it made Cloud feel any better. Kadaj's mood had shifted, gone into an almost palpable anger, for all his voice stayed level. "The ShinRa Company has always liked hiding Mother."

"Oh, so we should check out every place that's got anything to do with them from top to bottom and one right after the other, huh?" Loz asked, sounding oddly happy to have thought of that as he poked around the materia. Loz was completely entranced in the materia, picking up one and staring at it carefully before going to another, almost like a little kid.

Little children, Cloud thought suddenly, and it was a realization terrible in its clarity. The two of them, maybe even all three--were just _children_. Fumbling little children with no idea what they're doing and thinking _Jenova_ is going to tell them.

Was that what Sephiroth had really been inside?

He had no intention of being here long enough to find out. He kept a sharp eye on both of them, but began surreptitiously reaching for his PHS. By now, someone had to notice he was gone--and if there were any gods who would listen Marlene had gotten out--and if he could call Zack or Tifa.

"Um-hmm," Kadaj said to Loz, nodding faintly. He seemed calmer, less angry, but Cloud stayed on edge, watching and waiting--he managed to get his PHS out, but held it hidden in his hand--he doubted they'd leave him alone, but all he needed was to get it open and to hit one of the speed dial numbers. "There will be a lot more of us, soon."

"This is gonna be fun!" Loz said, almost wistfully as he stood, smiling happily at the materia in his hands, examining it in the strange, white lights of the trees. Neither one of those statements boded well, even though Cloud couldn't begin to fathom how there could be more--Sephiroth had seen to that, going through everyone--_nearly_ everyone--who had been given Jenova cells. Were there more fragments? Or a way to _make_ more? And how in Hel's name had _these three_ been created in the first place?

"But before that," Kadaj said, starting to walk around, "I've got a few words for our _other_ big brother. For him acting like he's not a part of this," he said, raising his hand and the materia inside his arm flaring again with the power of a spell not yet cast, and Cloud's hand tightened more, trying to hide the PHS. "And _you_," he said, his voice a snarl. "Do you know how alone we are? How alone we have been?" he said, shaking with rage, and whirled on Cloud, the spell flaring and shooting out, aimed with a sharp precision just as Cloud hit one of the speed dial buttons.

Cloud let out a sharp, pained hiss as electricity ran through him. His spasming hand twitched, and the sparking PHS dropped to the ground.

"Well," Kadaj said, looking sharp-eyed at Cloud over his shoulder. "Do you?"

\--

When the phone rang, Zack had been hoping against hope that it was Cloud.

"They've got Denzel," was what he heard Tifa say instead, with no preamble or preface, and Zack's stomach sank. "When Reno left, he went looking for information, since apparently Reno had been able to understand Marlene through all that crying. He said they took a whole bunch of children off with them. And one of them had Cloud."

Zack let out a long string of curses.

"And according to Rude, they're heading towards the Forgotten City," Tifa said when Zack finished.

"That figures," Zack said, sighing. Then he frowned. "...Uh, how did they know that?"

"They're _Turks_, Zack."

"Yeah, OK, that was a dumb question," he said said with a grin. One that fell off his face quickly as he turned his bike definitively towards Ajit. He knew a shorter way there than the trail he had been following, and he hoped that it would give him--and Cloud--a little more breathing room. "I'm heading out there now. I'll call you as soon as I know anything, OK? And...tell Marlene I'm sorry and I'll bring Cloud and Denzel back."

"Just Marlene?" Tifa said after a long silence.

"I'll bring them back," Zack said stiffly, and Tifa hung up before he could.

\--

Kadaj gave him a smirk and Loz picked up the PHS as Cloud shook his head to try and clear it and started massaging his shocked hand. _I did not need that_, he thought, feeling jittery. _What I do need now is a Curaga._

He'd taken too many hits already today, used up too much energy--he could feel the current of a Limit Break running under his skin, all of the magical energy from exhaustion twitching just under the surface. He held it back, knowing whatever it was, if he was going to try and let his body cast a Limit Break, he'd be a lot better served waiting until he was at least able to focus it--the last thing he needed was to accidentally throw Cures around at end up needing a Phoenix Down while Kadaj bounced around on a Cure high. So he tamped down on it and _waited_.

"Get rid of that," Kadaj said lightly. "He won't really need it any more. You won't really need any of _them_ any more," and there was something poisonous in how he said 'them.'

Loz picked up the PHS and threw it as hard as he could, and there came the sound of it falling into water with a splash.

Kadaj gave him a strangely disappointed look and Cloud shrugged. "It was worth a shot," he said flatly, and Kadaj, oddly enough, _laughed_.

Cloud stared at him, blinking, then shook his head. Trying to figure out Kadaj's mental shifts was beginning to give him a headache. _Enough of this_, he thought. "Why did you bring me here? What do you want?" he said, his voice flat.

"To make Mother happy. To not be alone," Kadaj said simply, as if that answered everything perfectly, and Cloud had no idea what to make of either response.

"Alone?" Cloud said, narrowing his eyes slightly. Kadaj had said that before, right before hitting Cloud with a Thunder. There were three of them--Kadaj, Loz, and the other one--so what exactly did Kadaj mean by _that_?

Kadaj dropped his hand." We've been alone for so long. But not for much longer," he said, straightening and turning his back to Cloud." Soon, there will be so many of us, that none of us will be lonely while we wait for Mother."

"What does _that_ mean?" Cloud said, honestly perplexed. As far as he knew, everyone who had the ability to be turned into a Sephiroth clone--everyone aside from him and Zack--was dead. The only thing Cloud could think of was that Kadaj knew a way to make more fragments of Sephiroth, but even then, that had to be a finite number. He glanced at Loz who had gone back to cheerfully pawing through the materia, and made a face. It was obvious that there was something of a diminishing return happening, so making more 'fragments' probably wouldn't work out too well.

_Be nice_, the laughing voice in his head said again, and he ignored it with rolled eyes the same as he had before. _Oh, come on_, he thought back. _Bottom of the barrel._

The more unsettling prospect was that he and Zack were the only clones left of Sephiroth left on the planet, and the Sephiroth fragments were obviously wanting to make "Mother" happy, and that very well might mean trying to bring Sephiroth back and so had found a new way to do it.

His head was finally his own--sort of--and the prospect of having control wrested away from him and turned into someone else, again, set the Limit Break energy inside of him crackling again under the surface, morphing slightly into a different kind of attack.

It wouldn't be much of a fight, but he was not going to go down easy.

Kadaj suddenly went stiff, like a dog catching a scent, or as if he had caught a faint sound on the wind." Yazoo is coming. Bring him," he said, turning and gesturing at Cloud.

"Is that the other one?" Cloud asked as Loz grabbed him by the arm--and it had to be the Geostigma arm, Cloud thought as a white-hot flare of pain went through him, making the Limit Break under his skin flare _almost_ to the point where it would have burst out--and pulled him up.

"Our other brother, yes," Kadaj said, his eyes bright. "He's bringing the rest of us! For our Reunion," Kadaj said, and his face lit up in a way wholly different from before. This was almost ecstatic, as suddenly everything unfocused and jittering in Kadaj focused to a laser-like point.

That, Cloud decided, was not a good at all. He'd wanted answers, and he had the feeling he was going to get them...whether he really wanted them or not.

\--

Tifa stared at the phone after she hung it up, and put both her hands on the counter to steady them. She had no idea how it was that everything, in a span of less than twelve hours, had gone so topsy-turvy.

Denzel and Cloud were gone, Marlene was a wreck, she was a mess herself, and Zack.

She let out a slow breath. Zack was right about one thing, if nothing else--they should not have exploded like that in front of Marlene. It may have needed to have been said--the gods all knew that and a lot more needed to be said--but it hadn't been the time, and in front of poor Marlene had definitely _not_ been the place.

She hated this. She hated being left behind; she hated being the one stuck at home and left only to _wait_. She'd always been active, always wanted to be out there impacting things instead of _waiting_. She hated waiting, she hated not knowing what was going on, and she hated having to blindly wait for others to do things, with no way to impact them at all. She'd gotten used to standing in the background and trying to push people forward--as a child, her mother had often told her to be more ladylike, let the menfolk do the adventuring because they had to to find themselves, but be there at their back to make sure they went the right way and to support them and that it was just as important, and her father used to tell her to enjoy her play now, because when she was older she'd be a wife and a mother and out adventuring was no place for a woman--but she'd had her world and everything she'd been told and raised to believe turned upside down.

How could she be at Cloud's back, trying to push him in the right way because everything she'd learned growing up told her it wasn't her place to do it herself, when there hadn't been anything _left_? How could she support him, when there hadn't been anything to support? When he'd needed protecting the way she'd always dreamed she would be--thanks to the old tales and the romantic stories she'd so blindly ingested and the way everything seemed to tell her was The Way Things Were, the man leading the way and his beloved a step behind, him protecting her from the threats without and her protecting him from the threats within--and there being no one to protect her but herself? She'd had to be so strong for so long, and realize childhood dreams and imaginings were nothing like the real world; had to help forge the way and be the protector of the threats from without, because there was nothing left within.

Her world had been destroyed--not just Nibelheim, not just Midgar, not just Gaia, but the entire bedrock of what she'd believed and been taught. And she'd _had_ to be out there, slogging along right there with Zack in all their fights, having to _prove_ she could keep up; that she wasn't a burden and could be trusted to protect Cloud or to have Zack's back so he could when he would have sooner left them all behind. No one could have protected her but herself, and expecting someone else to had been _disastrous_.

And now here she was, stuck so many kilometers way, sitting in a darkened room with only a phone and a terrified child for company, waiting, and she realized how much of a lie everything her mother had told her was...and how true it was. Being left behind was so much worse than being in the front, and she was beginning to feel like it took more strength than she had within her.

She hated this--the helplessness, the waiting, and the being so alone.

But she wasn't alone. She took a deep breath. She wasn't alone, there was still someone she had to protect--protect from the dangers within. "Marlene!" she yelled, not sure yet if she was ready for all this, but knowing she didn't have much choice. "Are you awake?"

Marlene's voice was muffled, and still thick and clogged. "I'm awake," she said from upstairs, and Tifa took a deep breath, and headed up the stairs.

\--

He had no idea where they were taking him, but Cloud was grateful for at least one, small thing--he was walking, and not staring upside down at Loz's ass.

At this point, he would take what he could get.

When they got to some strange remnants of what seemed to have been a temple on a small bit of earth surrounded by water, Cloud had the strangest feeling he _knew_ this place, somehow; that it was familiar in half-waking kind of way.

He was distracted from the odd, unsettling déjà vu by someone calling out his name. He jolted his head over to where he'd heard the voice, hoping very much that he had heard wrong.

"Cloud! Cloud!"

"Denzel?!" Cloud felt as if someone had just sat off a Blizzaga in his stomach. "Where in Hel's name did you come from?"

Denzel swallowed thickly from across the water. "The...we just got...he said he could...They said they could fix it!" Denzel stopped and looked around wildly.

"_Fix_ it? Fix _what_? Never mind--Bring him here. Now!" Cloud snapped sharply, and Loz looked startled and blinked.

"Um, Kadaj?" Loz started uncertainly.

Cloud turned his glare on Kadaj, who responded to it with a strange, indulgent little smile. "You'll be together soon enough. All of us will be," he said, then gave Loz a sharp look and shook his head no. Loz lost the uncertain look and glared at Cloud, then Denzel.

Denzel balled his hands into fists, looking as if he were about to try and cross. He had gotten as far as a step closer, when the other fragment, Yazoo, put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. "All of you must wait here for now," he said, his voice low. "And he's right, we will all be together soon."

Denzel bit his lip and looked over at Cloud.

Cloud shook his head once, sharply, then turned to Kadaj, cursing the fact that there were a good three meters plus Loz and the grip Loz had on his arm between him and the materia--Loz had unequipped his bracer at some point, and given the power Kadaj had shown with that Thundaga he had sent off, trying anything unequipped would have ended as embarrassingly badly as the fight in the church with Loz. "Let him go," he said tightly.

Kadaj gave him a wide-eyed look. "He came of his own will, brother. How can I let him go when he _chose_ to come here?"

"Chose to come here for _what_?"

"An end to the pain. An end to all our pain. Reunion," he said with a beatific smile, and spread his arms. "Reunion."

"Reunion?" Cloud said, narrowing his eyes and trying to figure out what under the Heavens Kadaj could be talking about--he'd said 'reunion' over and over again, but not once had he said what exactly that _was_.

"Our little big brother doesn't know?" Loz said, sounding slightly confused.

"No, your 'little big brother' doesn't know," Cloud snapped in irritation. "And I'm not your brother. What in Hel's name are you all planning?!"

Kadaj ignored him, his focus now on the children who were milling almost uncertainly on the other side of the water. Yazoo had finished getting the children in place for whatever insanity it was Kadaj had planned and was slowly wading over towards them, and Cloud realized that he was about to get his answer; that he was about to find out right now just what it was they were doing. A frenetic tension had begun to run through Kadaj like an electric circuit in an almost palpable way and it drew the eyes of all the children, even Denzel's, to him.

Cloud could understand why; all of Kadaj's jitteriness had been focused into an almost fevered pitched, and something--that something that had been scratching at the back of his brain, that he had been trying to ignore even as if left him feeling more and more unsettled--_reacted_.

It was obvious the instant Kadaj decided to speak. From what little Cloud remembered of Sephiroth--both vague flashes from _before_ but mainly from _after_\--for all Sephiroth had been the kind of person people would listen to, for all he had some kind of _pull_, it had never been anything like this. Sephiroth had used the sheer force of his presence to make others follow him; Kadaj had shades of that same presence but all of it focused into something Sephiroth himself had never used like this. Sephiroth, in his way, had always been reserved.

Kadaj was not. And when he spoke, it was as if something within him came alive, and that sheer desperate force of his will coming out through his words drew all attention.

"Mother gave us a special power," he said, raising his arms and spreading them out wide, and looking upwards to the sky as he spoke, almost as if he were looking for guidance. "The power to hurt humans," he said, and suddenly realigned himself, from the sky to the children who were seemingly hung on every word. "And the power to fight the planet."

The way those words hit Cloud was almost like a physical blow. He'd figured that Jenova played a part in this somehow, but knowing that it wasn't _over_\--that it truly wasn't over, that she had managed to find a way back to try and destroy the planet--left Cloud with a vague feeling of weariness. It was supposed to all be over, they were all supposed to be trying to find ways to move on with their lives, but instead, they were back in this again, and the last year--and the five years he had lost--had only been a holding pattern.

Kadaj continued on speaking, and Cloud shook himself out of his moment of bitterness to pay attention again. "The truth is, everyone has that power," Kadaj said, nodding once and pointing out at the children.

_'Everyone'? What in Hel's name is he talking about?_

"That's right. All of us are brothers."

Cloud was beginning to think that if he heard the word "brother" again, he was going to start banging his head against something hard and solid.

Kadaj turned and began a frenetic pacing as he spoke, and that didn't seem like a good thing. Kadaj was even worse at staying still than Zack was, but he was also far, far twitchier, as if he was on a constant hair trigger. There was something almost frantic about him now, mixed in with the strange fervor, making him seem more dangerous. "She may have melted away into the Lifestream, but we inherited Mother's legacy. We are brothers; the chosen ones!" he said, spreading his arms again wide, and he gave Cloud a sharp glare before his demeanor changed; as his hands clinched into fists and the rage that was always just below the surface began to show.

Cloud kept his face neutral even as his thoughts were whirling around. Kadaj wasn't making any sense at all. Why he insisted Cloud was his "brother," that made a strange sort of twisted sense--he was a failed clone and they were fragments of Sephiroth--but just what Denzel and the other children had to do with it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Likewise, this "power" Kadaj was talking about--a power from Jenova? How did any of them have that?

"But," he spat out at Cloud, then whirled back around towards the children, "the planet has gotten in all of our ways and tried to stop our growth. And _that_ is why your bodies are in pain and your hearts are faltering!"

_The Geostigma_, Cloud realized with a sinking feeling. It was the planet reacting to Jenova--it was why mainly children were infected...the children were the sons and daughters of SOLDIERs and ShinRa workers. The children of those who had been experimented on and "improved" by ShinRa. They all had parts of Jenova in them--they had 'inherited' Jenova's legacy in almost the truest sense of the word, with parts of Jenova written into their very DNA. He knew it was Jenova and had from the beginning, but...but he didn't have a clue how to root it out, or even calm the reaction to it. It felt like his biggest failure every time he tried, because he was _close_, he _knew_ he was close, and yet.

Something in Kadaj drew back, settled, and Cloud went on edge--it was coming. Whatever it was, it was _coming_, and there was something almost anticipatory in the back of Cloud's mind. "But I'll heal you."

And then the world began to _glitch_, to spark and flare, in bright, fragments of _other_ that lasted only a split second, but were enough, were too much, too much like the Geostigma but _not_. It was the trigger, and the space around Kadaj began to flicker and warp, as if he were surrounded by heat. And it coalesced around him, Jenova's power taking a form like a scratching, glitching flame that only grew as Kadaj's words and rapture grew to a fever pitch.

"I will heal you, and then, we'll go to Mother. We will gather our power as a _family_ and then we will take revenge on the planet!"

It never ended. Jenova was determined to win her eternal fight with the planet, even after she was dead. _What more do we have to do?_ Cloud thought. _What else is she going to do?_

He got his answer with Kadaj's "Follow me" and the way the children were all staring at Kadaj as if mesmerized.

Only just barely did he catch Kadaj's next words, spoken not to the children and lacking the strange pull of before, his words now childlike and to himself, spoken as if he was unable to keep them inside, his smile not the manic, beatific one of before, but one of pride; of a child waiting to be praised.

"Look, Mother! Look how many brothers we have now! So until I can meet You, I'm not alone."

"You have your 'brothers', isn't that enough?" Cloud snapped, feeling unsettled. "Do you even know what your 'Mother' is? Or what she did?"

"_Enough_?" Kadaj asked in a shocked, disbelieving tone of voice, turning to look at Cloud, his eyes far too bright within that warped, glitching space. "What She _did_? You...you're a _traitor_," Kadaj spat out, and there was something in him that was stung by that, even through Cloud had no idea why. "You and our other big brother. Zack. You ignore Mother and have turned against all of us!" he said.

He smiled again, a predatory smile that had more of Sephiroth than anything Kadaj had shown until then. "But not for long." Kadaj turned back to the children, and walked slowly into the water--and from each step, that warping coalesced, became real, became a dark energy that spread out of him and into the water, changing it to something dark; the water itself turned black and the air filled with a scent that felt like destruction. At it wasn't just the air; the water reeked, a stench of crematory ash and brimstone arising from it.

No one seemed to notice it, not the way Cloud did--not even the children standing in the middle of it seemed to notice how strong it was even though Cloud, from several feet away, felt like it was gagging him.

But what disturbed him on some level was how something in him _reacted_ to that crematory smell, growing more excited and trying to rise up, reaching _for_ it even as something else recoiled away.

Kadaj reached down and cupped some of it in his hands, and took a long, slow drink and spread his arms. And then, one by one, the children, as if completely oblivious to the water's foulness, did as well. Denzel was last, hesitant and his eyes never leaving Cloud before he squared his shoulders back, cupped the water in his hands and _drank_.

The glitching that made his vision swim made Cloud want to rip his own head apart, and the something that was inside him was growing excited, growing eager, and was _calculating_.

Kadaj turned to face them and gave a Cloud sudden, almost gleeful smile, one that made his entire face light up, softening the harshness and making of him a boy, something oddly and disturbingly pure. "You hide it, but sometimes it comes out, that you're like us. Why are you fighting us, brother? _Don't you feel him_?"

"N-no," Cloud said through gritted teeth, and his words were a lie--he didn't want what Kadaj was saying to be true, he didn't want to give a name to the murky, unsettled, familiar feeling waking and stirring within him.

Kadaj's eyes narrowed into tight slits and they never left Cloud's. And as he began his deliberate steps out of the water, towards Cloud, his eyes _gleamed_.

\--

"So what do you think, partner?" Rude said softly.

Reno shrugged and knocked back a shot--they were still on duty since Elena and Tseng hadn't been found yet, but they were now back in Midgar and in the half-rebuilt ruins of the ShinRa building. Rufus had ordered them to stay in Midgar, then to leave him alone for awhile, so when Reno pulled out the Costan tequila and started doing shots, Rude hadn't said anything.

Reno knew his limits and Rude didn't question him.

"What do I think? I think we're boned," Reno said, and tilted the bottle towards Rude. "You?"

Rude frowned faintly. "I think you're right," he said solemnly, and then reached for the tequila.

\--

Kadaj stopped, still waist-high in the water. "Bring him here," he said lightly. Loz almost instantly started walking Cloud over, and Cloud started trying to get free--even from this distance, he could tell something had happened to the children, and the closer he got, the more his heart pounded.

He got close enough to see the eyes of the children the furthest into the water, and that was more than enough to let him know it was time to get free and time to get free now. He didn't know how under the heavens Kadaj had done whatever it was he did, but being confronted with slit-pupiled eyes staring blankly at him let him know that near that water was not where he wanted to be.

As if the _stench_ of it wasn't enough.

"Be still!" Loz said in irritation at Cloud's trying to work his arm free, and Cloud started trying to get his arm free more.

_Hit hard at the solar plexus--there!_ something in him said suddenly, and his body reacted almost before it really registered, twisting to throw a sharp jab to Loz's midsection with his left elbow when Loz was mid-step. It startled Loz, knocking him off his stride, and it was enough for Cloud to jerk himself free, then into a sweeping roundhouse that knocked Loz off his feet. The uppercut Cloud threw to Loz's jaw before Loz could try to catch himself sent him crashing to the ground, and Cloud was almost--

He pulled back, sharply, and went still as he found himself with Yazoo's gunblade against his back, right in between his shoulder blades.

_Shit. I forgot about him._

"You're a _traitor_," Kadaj said again, his eyes narrowed to fine slits.

"No, I am not," Cloud spat out angrily. "I was _never_ on your side to begin with, and I don't want any part of your fucked up revenge-on-the-planet scheme," he snapped. "I kind of _like_ the Planet, thanks."

"But the Planet hates you," Kadaj said, his eyes never wavering. "You suffer from the Planet's anger as much as my brothers and sisters do," Kadaj said, sweeping out with his hand to indicate the children. "You're on our side just because of that! The planet is fighting Mother, so she's fighting _you_, as well. Or are you not in pain and being killed slowly by the Planet's anger?" Kadaj said wildly, but his eyes were bright, expectant.

Cloud flinched slightly, but his expression never changed.

"Stop crying, Loz," Yazoo's low voice said from behind Cloud, and Cloud flicked his eyes over, briefly, to see that Loz was still on the ground, sitting there quietly, and slow tears were falling down his cheeks.

_They're all just children_, Cloud thought again, vaguely horrified. Why they had gone after children made more sense; it wasn't just that they children all had Jenova cells, it was that they were on the same level.

"The Planet is protecting itself. That's all," Cloud said flatly. "Maybe when we're all gone, when there's nothing left of Jenova to threaten it, it will be over."

"So you want to die? You think it's fair?!" Kadaj said disbelievingly.

"No. I _don't_ want to die," Cloud said, his voice just as flat as before." But 'fair' doesn't mean anything. Nothing about any of this has ever been _fair_ and what I _want_ has never meant anything, and it's not like I, or anyone, will live if Jenova gets her way. But what do you want, Kadaj? Why are you doing this?"

Kadaj faltered slightly. "To make Mother happy," he said.

"And how are you going to do that, by destroying the world?" Cloud said disbelievingly. "Even if it means you die, too?"

"That doesn't matter. And I wouldn't be here long anyway," Kadaj said in light tones.

Cloud stared at him blankly.

"When Reunion is complete, he'll come back," Kadaj finally said.

"Who'll come back?" Cloud said, blinking.

"You know," Kadaj said with a chiding smile.

"No, I--_no_," Cloud said as the realization hit him. "_How_?!"

Kadaj smiled.

"This is like some nightmare that won't end," Cloud muttered under his breath. Things were going from bad to worse--they were going to try to somehow resurrect _Sephiroth_?

Given everything he'd seen already that day, what he would have declared "impossible" yesterday was looking more and more "very possible" today.

"As long as the Planet exists, defying Mother and him, no," Kadaj said lightly. "But I'm going to end it by bringing him back and doing Mother's will through Reunion."

"Never," Cloud said, gritting his teeth.

Kadaj flinched suddenly, as if he was in pain.

"K-Kadaj? Is it _him_?" Loz asked, worriedly, and Kadaj nodded.

_What is going on?_ Cloud thought.

"Corrupted...you're corrupted," Kadaj said slowly, his eyes focused inwards, as if he were listening to a voice inside his head. "_Tainted_. And _he's_ so angry, brother."

Cloud had a very, very bad feeling about this. "Who is 'he'?"

"Sephiroth," Kadaj said, and hearing it, having that last bit of proof, was like a blow. "He's so angry. I can feel it, you know. He's always angry, but now he's really angry. At you."

"Sephiroth is dead," Cloud said flatly.

"For now," Kadaj said, his voice strangely light, as it had been a few times before.

"And if you manage your hare-brained scheme of bringing him back, he'll be dead again soon enough," Cloud said, narrowing his eyes. "I've helped kill him twice now, once more won't be so hard."

Kadaj let out a sharp, surprised laugh. "Maybe, huh? So maybe I should do something he never managed," Kadaj said in that same, strange, light tone of voice, aside from the moment of anger that had flared brightly on the spat-out 'he'. "..._Brother_.

"You have to be purified," Kadaj said, and Cloud didn't like that anymore than he had liked anything Kadaj had been saying all night. "You have to become one of _us_. Bring him here."

_Oh, Hel's Realm._

Yazoo poked him sharply with the tip of the gunblade. "Do not try what you did with Loz. It will not end well," he said softly. He moved slowly towards the water's edge, then stopped, and didn't move even when Yazoo's gunblade prodded him.

"No," Cloud said, shaking his head, and squared his jaw.

Kadaj laughed, and made a slight gesture with one hand.

"Are you sure?" Yazoo asked softly, and Kadaj nodded. The pressure of the tip of the gunblade between his shoulder blades was gone, but Cloud didn't have time to relax because he immediately found himself with Kadaj's double-bladed sword pointed at his neck.

And faintly, oh so faintly, Cloud could hear the sound of a motorcycle, one he had repaired often enough that the sound of it was as familiar as a voice.

Zack was coming.

And Cloud needed to stall them until Zack got there. And that meant he was going to have to talk.

_Think, Strife. Think. There has to be a way to get Kadaj talking. He seems to like the sound of his own voice, just get him started on something...preferably something that _won't_ end with him stabbing me through the throat._

They were fragments, pieces of Sephiroth, and one thing Cloud got loud and clear, even if he didn't understand _why_, was that they were _lonely_. It didn't make a damned bit of sense, but Cloud had to admit that he could understand all too well what it felt like to be _incomplete_. His own head was shades and shadows of someone else's memory, and that urge for completeness was something he _got_.

_Maybe they think "Reunion" will make them whole_, he thought, the inner voice that was usually laughing now serious. _Bring everything broken together by bringing everything with Jenova cells stapled in will 'fix' them._

_It's a stupid theory but it's all I've got,_ he thought back. _No one thinking straight would think like that, but I don't think these three would know how to think straight. The way they think curves so much the only thing in front of them is their own asses._

_Now, didn't I say to be nice?_ that voice said, laughing again now instead of the pensive seriousness, and Cloud rolled his eyes at it. _Deny it_, he shot back, and got a faint chuckle in response, and Cloud figured it was probably a good thing that at least he amused himself and at least some part of him could find humor in this insane situation.

_And I'm talking to myself. In my own head. By the gods. Focus, Strife, focus._

"You say you want Reunion, and to do what 'Mother' wants, but what is Reunion going to bring you? You asked me if I wanted to die...isn't that what Reunion will do? If Jenova gets her way, there won't be anything left of the planet or anyone on it. Why do you think she'll spare you? And if she does...if you think you're alone now, how will you be then? On an empty shell of a planet with only _Jenova_? If you're here because she willed it, what happens when she doesn't need you any more? And if you bring back Sephiroth, then what?"

Kadaj's sword faltered--not a lot, but _enough_, and there was something in his eyes that looked so lost and so young. "Mother--" he began, and Cloud cut him off.

"All Jenova does is destroy, even the ones she 'loves'." Cloud said. "What makes you think she spare you when she doesn't need you any more? Think she'll need you if she gets Sephiroth back?"

Kadaj _flinched_.

"If you think you're alone, it's only because you're listening to her and setting yourself against the world for someone else's crazy quest. You don't have to follow Jenova and you don't have to be alone," Cloud said, and ignored the sword at his neck to reach out his hand. _Please gods, let this work, otherwise I am a dead man_, he thought.

And then, with a strange, needy look on his face, Kadaj lowered the sword and reached out.

Reached out, and took his hand.

And then the lost look changed to a smile, a smile that was all teeth, and Kadaj's eyes almost glittered with what looked like happiness. "You're right. I _don't_ have to be alone. Because I'll have all my brothers with me," he said with a smile, and pulled Cloud into the water.

And the last thing Cloud thought before he hit the water was, "Well, _shit_."

\--

Marlene was on the sofa in the living room--the downstairs was the bar, but the upper floors was where they all lived, cramped though it was--curled around one of her stuffed animals and watching something on the view screen.

Tifa sat down next to her. "You OK?" she said softly, and Marlene nodded, but didn't look at her. She'd sent Marlene upstairs when Reno and Rude had come back, figuring Marlene didn't need to be there for whatever they had to say. It was going to make this harder, though.

"What did they say about Denzel?" Marlene asked, still staring at the screen, but biting her lip.

Part of her knew she should lie--tell Marlene something to not worry her anymore--but she wondered if things were too far beyond that. "Well...he's...Denzel's..." she began, and wished with all her heart she could have been the one motoring out after the Sephiroth clones instead of Zack, and him being left here for this. "He's with the same people who have Cloud," she finally said. "But Zack is going to get them back."

"Oh," Marlene said, and her voice was small.

"We...we just have to wait," Tifa said, forcing a smile on her face, even though Marlene wasn't looking at her.

"I hate waiting," Marlene said, her eyebrows turning in, and Tifa let out a faint laugh.

"Same here, sweetheart. I hate it, too."

Marlene sat up. "Can't we do anything?" she said, and swallowed.

"We have to stay here," Tifa said, trying to keep her expression mild even as her stomach clinched. She hated this, hated that there was nothing she could do, that she and Marlene were alone--

But they weren't alone, she realized suddenly. They'd all be running around, like they were in this alone, like it was only them against the world and Sephiroth, but...but even when they'd been against the real Sephiroth...they hadn't been alone.

She may not have been able to be active, to be out by Zack's side fighting to get back the people she loved, but that didn't mean there wasn't anything she could do. Support from behind, push things they way they needed to be, shoring everything up from behind even if no one saw you doing it.

"We have to stay here," she said again. "But we're not alone. There is something we can do," she said, and stood up.

Marlene looked up at her.

"We can call for backup," Tifa said, and held out her hand. "C'mon, we've got calls to make," she said, and the smile now didn't feel fake at all.

Marlene stood up and took her hand, and nodded, giving a sharp little nod.

They weren't _alone_.

\--

The world was water and water was the world; there was nothing but him and nothing but the sound of the water in his ears and the taste of water in his mouth, and the weight of hands pushing him down, deeper, into the water of ash, and he was choking, swallowing, he was--

There was something almost horrifyingly familiar about the _pressure_, the way his consciousness felt attacked, forced to expand, to accept, to be reshaped and lose his self; to disintegrate, join, and be obliterated, to be _empty_, to become a _vessel_\--

_NO!_

The last thing he felt was the Limit Break he had been holding back hitting, _exploding_; flowing out, flowing into the water, and the faint scent of lilies.

And the last thing he heard, before everything shattered, was the sound of Kadaj _screaming_.

\--

The sudden, bright, glitching pain almost blocked out the sound of screaming.

"Screaming" was not a sound Zack particularly _liked_ hearing, especially when he couldn't do anything about it--and right then, he couldn't. There was flaring pain over his ribs and his left thigh, like he was being attacked from the inside. He braked quickly and gritted his teeth against it, until the world went back to normal. And when he could breathe again, when the pain no longer made the world go white, he stomped down on the pain and gunned his motorcycle towards where the screaming had come from.

He wasn't quite sure what he had been expecting when he got there, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, "chaos" was not it. Chaos and crying children.

Some of them on the bank were crying; the ones in the water...

"Shit!" Zack let out quickly, skidding to a stop and jumping off the bike as soon as he could. The kids in the water were all, well, he was pretty sure they were alive, but to keep it that way, they needed to be gotten out, and fast, since they were all very obviously unconscious.

He was about to dive in when there was a sharp, "_Don't_."

He looked around, shocked. "Vincent? Where did you--"

"Later," Vincent said, his voice terse. "But _you_ need to stay away from the water. Trust me. I'll get them out," he said, and vanished into a swirl of red.

"When did you learn that?! And why can't I help?!" Zack yelled, but remained at the side, pacing and all but twitching with the urge to move; to help. But he figured if Vincent had warned him, there had to have been some kind of reason for it. He dug his hands into his hair and watched as Vincent transported himself from one kid to another and transporting back to drop the kid off by Zack. Having to do _something_, he started yelling directions at Vincent.

Then his voice died because he _recognized_ that blond hair, on the opposite side in the water. "Shit. Shit, _no_. Cloud!" he yelled. He unholstered his sword and threw it down--Vincent's warning could be damned by the gods; he was getting Cloud. "Cloud! Are you OK? Hold on, I'm coming!"

The only answer he got was one of the Sephiroth clones raising his gun and shooting at him, the bullet whizzing right past his head. The long-haired one gestured sharply at the bruiser clone and then the water, and then he vanished in a black swirl, almost eerily similar to Vincent's red.

"Where under the Heavens did _you_ learn that?! And how come everybody can do that but me?" Zack yelped, then didn't have time to do anything else before he was being attacked by the clone who had materialized behind him.

"Vincent, dammit, get Cloud! Get him and get him now!" Zack yelled, dodging and diving into a roll. He grabbed his sword from the ground as he came out of the roll and went into a crouch, and then yelled, "I do _not_ have time for this!" and attacked.

Sometimes Zack felt like the only time he really knew what he was doing was when he was fighting. Fighting was simple--it was you versus a clear opponent, and the only options were winning and losing. Fighting itself wasn't _complicated_. Things leading _up_ to the fight, feelings in a fight, all those could be a mess, but fighting itself...it was easy to lose yourself in it, to reduce everything at that time to you and your opponent.

He couldn't let himself be distracted; had to let everything else go, in this instant, to him and the Sephiroth clone. "What do you want?!" he yelled.

"What did he do?" the long-haired clone said back, sounding almost calm, but as if there were a hairline fracture in the calm.

Warning bells went off in Zack's head--he knew that tone of voice; it was a terrifying flashback to _Nibelheim_, to Sephiroth right before he broke, to right before Zack's "You mean you're different?" That one instant was one that haunted him, that had come back to reverberate in his head in the weeks and months when they chased after Sephiroth, one that haunted him even in nightmares. Zack had never been that great at reading people, but that was something that had constantly hounded him and he had constantly questioned himself on, wondering how he had missed it and had blundered his way into setting off Sephiroth's breakdown. With as much as he'd replayed it in his head all these years, hearing that same tone of voice, from someone who looked so much like Sephiroth, nearly floored him.

"What did _who_ do?" Zack asked back, swinging his sword to block another bullet. On the cusp of a breakdown or not, that put the guy at three bullets now; the first bullet, the second when he landed behind Zack, and now this, and Zack needed him to shoot off those the three he had left more before he'd have to reload or resort to only blade attacks. The short length of the gunblade would give Zack the advantage if he could get distance between them once it was out of bullets--it was the weakness of the gunblade as a weapon. It worked only for long distances and very short distances. If once the long distance element was gone when the bullets ran out and Zack could get into the middle distance gap that the gunblade couldn't cover but the Buster sword _did_, the game was over.

The long-haired one came in close in a sudden, furious attack, and Zack raised the Buster sword up quickly, blocking right before the gun blade could connect, and now their faces were only inches apart, separated by the swords. "What did he do? How did he do it?" the long-haired clone hissed angrily, trying to press forward.

"Who?" Zack yelled, pushing back and pushing him off, then feigning a swing right--Sephiroth's weak side, and so he figured it was worth a shot, and then trying to thrust the sword into an exposed area. The long-haired one was _distracted_, that much was painfully obvious--he was leaving his side exposed and making careless mistakes--and it really was like Nibelheim all over again. That time, Zack shouldn't have been able to hold back Sephiroth at all, and there was no way Cloud should have been able to nearly finish the job. This time, Zack figured the advantage was his, even if _numbers_ weren't--if he could finish this off now, while all three of the clones were distracted, that'd be one less problem.

There was a flare of pain in his side and in his leg, one that made his vision swim, and Zack realized he didn't have as much of an advantage as he thought; not with as far as his Geostigma had advanced. It had flared up right before he'd gotten there, but he hadn't had time to recover from it and was feeling that now.

He gritted his teeth and pressed on--he'd end this and end this fast while he still could, because he had bigger worries than his own body failing him, and thankful that the clone had been too distracted to take advantage of Zack's own weakness. He had to get Cloud away from them, and do it now--

_Wait, whoa, there are three of them. Where's the other one?_ he thought suddenly, his eyes going wide.

He chanced a quick glance over to the other side, and saw the other clone, the bruiser, struggling with what looked like a wet body on the bank, and shaking it.

The other clone.

_Ifrit in a rainstorm, what happened?_

\--

_Fragments, shatterings, sparks of light, of memory, within the darkness. Everything was sharp and broken; fragments of light, and there was silence._

_And there was nothing, only a vague and desperate impulse to not fade into the ashen darkness, into the voices crying out for him to join, become one, to be refilled_; Reunion--

_and into then, the void._

_and into then, memory._

_and into then, the_ vessel.

\--

The only reason Denzel trusted the strange man in red was because he had heard Zack yelling directions at him. But as it was, as soon as the strange man, as pale as the three other men, had Cloud on the shore, Denzel was running over, ignoring the way Zack was fighting with one of the three men, and feeling a terrible kind of fear in his stomach.

_He's not dead, he can't be dead. It's Cloud, and Cloud's not...he's not dead, he's just not!_ Denzel thought frantically.

"Cloud! Cloud!" he yelled, skidding to his knees by Cloud and grabbing Cloud's arm. He started shaking it frantically. "Cloud! Can you hear me? What happened? Cloud!" he said, and felt his breath hitching. Cloud was limp and not reacting, and--

"You know him?" the man in red said sharply, and Denzel looked over quickly and nodded. "Then you stay with him and watch him. We have to get out of here. Are you from Midgar?" the man asked, and Denzel wondered why he was asking stupid questions when Cloud was--when Cloud--

He nodded quickly.

"All of you?"

Denzel nodded again, then started shaking Cloud.

"Midgar. how was it that they brought you all here?" the man said sharply.

"Truck," Denzel said, and pointed.

"Stay with him," the man said, and vanished in a swirl of tattered red cloak before Denzel could say anything.

"Cloud. are you OK? Are you OK?" Denzel said, his voice high-pitched. Cloud wasn't moving. He was breathing, but he wasn't moving, and he wasn't waking up, no matter how hard Denzel shook him. "Cloud, c'mon, you have to wake up. Please!" Denzel said, and started shaking Cloud's shoulder. He only stopped to wipe at his eyes, then went back to shaking him.

He was startled by the hand on his shoulder. Especially since it was made of metal and really pointy.

"We have to go. Now," the man said, his voice low but urgent. Denzel nodded, then looked over frantically at Zack.

"He'll come soon. We have to go now while we can," the man repeated again, then crouched down and picked up Cloud.

"I'm staying with him!" Denzel said sharply, tilting up his jaw.

The man in red nodded. "You two in the front, then. And hurry," the man said, his voice just as low and urgent, and shifted Cloud onto his shoulder. He wrapped Denzel in his cloak, and Denzel let out a sharp gasp as the world dissolved.

\--

_Two more bullets_, Zack thought, taking a quick glance around--he didn't know what Vincent was doing, but the place was clearing slowly of kids. _Vin, you better have a plan_, Zack thought, and took the fight into the trees, to get some distance between them and whatever it was Vincent was doing. The long-haired Sephiroth clone launched himself at Zack, and Zack braced himself quickly and used his sword to block the incoming attack, one hand on the hilt and the other bracing the flat of the blade.

"How did Cloud do it, defy Mother's will?" the long-haired one said, in that same hairline-fracture calm way, and Zack's jaw dropped.

"No idea, but way to go, Cloud!" he let out in a whoop and pushed forward with both hands, pushing the clone off. The clone's eyes narrowed into fine, angry slits, and he turned mid-air and fired his last two bullets in a rush, followed by two quick empty clicks. _ Ahh ha ha, gotcha_, Zack thought with a grin, and launched himself forward, ignoring the pain in his side and now his leg. Zack didn't know what Cloud had done or what had happened, but whatever it had done had KO'd one clone and knocked the other two off their feet.

And KO'd the kids and Cloud himself, but he pushed _that_ out before he could think about it.

There was the sound of a truck starting up from nearby, and he glanced over to see a truck speeding off, all the kids in the back and what had to be Vincent with all that red driving it off.

The water was clear and the only two people on the other side were the clones, so it was time for Zack to make his exit--right now his priority was Cloud, not the clone having a nervous breakdown, and if Cloud wasn't in that truck Zack was ripping Vincent's broody brains out.

It was time to get to _out_ of there.

With a whoop, he attacked in a furious rush, then dove out of the air; down straight towards for his bike.

\--

Denzel stared out the front window, Cloud between him and the man in red, and his arm around Cloud.

Cloud still hadn't woken up.

Denzel kept staring out, out at the strange trees shimmering in the dark, and remembered, faint as it was in his mind, the way he had felt when Cloud had picked him up the day they met. It had felt so _warm_, in a way that reminded him so much of his mother that it had almost made his chest hurt. He hadn't thought he'd ever feel that warmth again. So it had been so _easy_ to just trust Cloud; to finally let a grown-up take over.

And he remembered, the way the church had always smelled like lilies, and how whenever he smelled it, it felt safe. That smell just felt _safe_.

He remembered waking up that first day, surrounded in the smell of what he had thought was perfume, with his head resting on Cloud's chest. He didn't feel as tired as he had before--he'd actually felt OK, for the first time in a long, long time. It had been a long time since he'd felt safe, since he'd been able to sleep without being on edge, but...but it had felt like more than that.

He'd sighed then looked up, and saw the brightest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Bright blue eyes in a strangely pale face. "You awake now?" the man said, and Denzel had nodded.

He knew now, looking back, why Cloud had been so pale and why he'd felt better, but at the time, he hadn't known. He only knew that he felt better, and that he hoped, oh by the gods, how he'd hoped, that things would finally be okay.

"When you're ready," the man had said and his voice was both gentle and straightforward, "We'll go."

"Go where?" Denzel had said, and bit his lip.

"Home," the man had said as if it were normal and expected, and Denzel had sagged against him, against the man's warmth, shutting his eyes and starting to cry.

He leaned against Cloud's arm now, and faintly, so faintly, was the scent of lilies.

His face crumpled and he held onto Cloud, as tight as he could, and hoped maybe a little of his warmth would bring Cloud _home_ the same way as Cloud had done for him

\--

_And there were voices, so many voices._

_Even within the void._

\--

_What are you looking at?_

_\--the general name for the experiment. The experiment that used--_

_\--How are you so sure? I'm trying, but...but it seems like he'll never wake u--_

_\--end of the world is brought by the dueling of the beasts.  
The Goddess shall fall from the darkest sky--_

_\--oth's mother's name is Jeno--_

_This is...a monst--_

_How can you be so sure?_

_Never lose your--_

_Can you even hear me?_

_No, Cloud, no, don't! Aer--_

\--

_Even within the void, voices._

_So many voices._

\--

Zack followed after the truck Vincent had gotten from somewhere, all the while making sure the crazy clones weren't following him. It seemed like they had bigger problems right then than him, and that would have been a relief, only whatever their problem had been, it was Zack's as well.

_Cloud, you'd better be OK_, he thought, something tight in his chest. _You better be OK, or I swear on Odin's eye, I'm gonna kick your ass from here to the Lifestream._

He parked quickly, noticing that by then, all the kids in the back seemed to be awake. That seemed like a good sign, but he wasn't going to relax until he saw Cloud and Denzel with his own two eyes.

There was something strange about seeing Vincent talking to a truck full of small kids. Even from behind, Vincent looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, and without thinking, Zack blurted out, "Vin, how did you get a truck? I mean, this was lucky and all, but..."

Vincent turned around and gave him a level look. "I have the ability to teleport and I used to be a Turk. I hot-wired _their_ truck while they were distracted. Thank you for keeping that one busy."

Zack stared at him with his jaw hanging open for a long before he broke out into a grin. "Vincent, swear on Odin's eye, right now, I could _kiss_ you."

"Are you _trying_ to get me to leave?" the other man said, giving Zack a _look_.

"Love you too, Vinnie," Zack said, flashing a grin before his attention went back to the kids.

"You guys OK?" he said, scanning over them, and not seeing Denzel or Cloud felt like a punch. He covered it quickly. "Any of you hurt? What happened?"

They all shook their heads, but no one said anything. Finally, one little boy said, "They said they could fix us."

"Fix you? FIx what? How?"

"The 'stigma," he said, and looked down at the floor of the truck.

"What in Hel's name..." he began, then turned to Vincent. "Where's Cloud? And another kid, a little boy. Named Denzel. Vincent, where are they? They were--" Zack began, and Vincent motioned with his hand.

"In the front," he said, and there was something about the way he said it that made that strange, tight feeling slam back into Zack's chest.

"Don't scare me, Vin," he said, giving a wane smile, but Vincent didn't reply back. And while that wasn't unusual in and of itself, given the situation, it made something cold join the tight feeling in Zack's chest.

He followed Vincent to the front of the truck, and at first, it looked like Cloud was just sleeping--but that didn't make any sense, and if it was just that, Vincent wouldn't have that look on his face.

"Zack!" Denzel yelled, dropping his arm from around Cloud's shoulder and sliding out. Denzel's face looked pale, but Zack couldn't tell if it was, or if it was a trick of the strange lights of the forest. "Cloud--he won't--I can't get him to--" Denzel said, swallowing, and his cheeks were wet.

He put his hand on Denzel's shoulder and squeezed it, half to reassure Denzel, and half to reassure himself, and leaned in.

Cloud...was definitely _not_ 'asleep', and Zack swallowed thickly.

_Not again, I can't do this again_\--

He carefully took Cloud out of the truck, biting back a wince at a sharp pain from the Geostigma on his chest. He gritted his teeth, then backed out with Cloud, making sure not to let on just how much pain he was in. Right then, it didn't matter, and given how upset Denzel was, the last thing the kid needed was to see Zack crapping out.

He set Cloud down carefully against a tree so he could see him in the light, Denzel dogging his every step. Zack crouched next to Cloud and shook Cloud's shoulder, already knowing it would be useless but hoping that for once, one of the gods would be merciful. "Hey...hey, Cloud. C'mon, kid. Can you hear me?" he said, then shut his eyes. This was way, way too much like when Cloud had been mako poisoned, but this was _different_. There was something very, very wrong about this, and Zack had no idea why, other than the fact that Cloud hadn't been anywhere _near_ mako and so there was no good reason for him, therefore, to have been mako poisoned again.

"Is Cloud going to be all right?" Denzel asked, his hands balling into fists.

"Yeah," Zack said, because there was nothing else he could say. He opened his eyes and turned to give Denzel a smile, one he hoped would be reassuring. "He's gonna be _fine_. He just...he just needs to rest."

Denzel just stared at him, frowning. "I promise. He'll be OK," Zack said firmly, nodding once, sharply.

"OK," Denzel said, nodding back.

"Denzel, I need you do so something for me," Zack said, his voice serious. "I need you to go and keep an eye on everybody. Find out their names and where they live, because we gotta take everyone home, OK?"

Denzel nodded again.

"And tell Vincent to come over here, 'cause I need to talk to him."

"You mean the weird guy in red?"

Zack let out a surprised laugh, then nodded. "Yeah, that's Vinnie."

"OK," Denzel said, jerking his head into a stiff nod, then running off for the others. Zack waited until Denzel was out of range, then turned his attention to Cloud.

"Cloud, kid, you gotta wake up," he said. Cloud hadn't been hit with Sleep or anything like this--for all this wasn't a natural sleep, it wasn't a spell, that much was obvious. What it was was something Zack had seen before and knew all too well, but prayed to whatever god would listen that he was wrong.

Mako-poisoning.

Taking a deep breath, he raised one of Cloud's eyelids, to see if Cloud's eyes had that mako-poisoned look to them, then let out a harsh, stunned profanity, because what he saw was not what he was expecting--it was worse, it was something far, _far_ worse. Cloud's pupils were wide and blown out, but there was no mistaking the fact that they were slit pupils.

Or that they were _green_.

\--

_Voices, so many voices._

_And from within the voices, he began to find his own._

\--

_Find your--_

_The scenery._

_I've never seen the sky._

_I feel as though I know it._

_\--Promised Land_

_Ever since I was a child--_

_I'll be waiting._

_\--I could feel it._

_I don't remember. Nothing since Ni--_

_\--confirmed to be an Ancient--_

_Normal SOLDIERs are humans--_

_Am I even human?_

_\--who have been bathed in mako--_

_You're different from--_

_If only I was--_

_\--regular people--_

_How could someone like you--_

_I've never seen you use that sword before._

_\--a SOLDIER, too._

_Only a puppet._

_I don't have a hometown of my--_

_\--belhe--_

_\--own so I wouldn't know--_

_Talk to the Planet--_

_Was I also created the same way?_

_\--and find your Promised Land_

_I finally got through to you!_

_Don't get over confident._

_Are you trying to confuse me with everything you've just said?_

_My mother's name is--_

_One day run away from--_

_Mom, I'm not a--_

_I'll protect you,--_

_\--Let's find go to your the--_

_I prom--_

_Promised--_

_\--Land together._

\--

_And from within the void, from within the cacophony of voices, came unity; and from the unity within, came fragments and sparks._

\--

"What in Hel's name is going on?" Zack said, his hand falling in shock. He dropped down so he was sitting next to Cloud and put his arm around him, pulling Cloud against him as if just by being close enough he could somehow bring Cloud back, somehow undo whatever the Sephiroth clones had done. "What _are_ those three?! How can they do something like this? Is this why you told me to stay out of the water?"

Vincent nodded. "I don't know how, but it was the water that did this," he said. "And all of those who were in it, other than the three parts of Sephiroth, are infected with Geostigma. The same as you," Vincent added quietly. "It wasn't worth the risk."

Zack dug his hands into his hair, then looked around. "All the kids woke up, though. Is Cloud--?"

"I don't know what's wrong," Vincent said, shaking his head, and Zack swallowed, hard. "But it does have something to do with the Geostigma. All of the children, and Cloud, have it."

"Geostigma?"

"Right. From what I've been able to gather, Geostigma is caused by an overreaction of the system that removes abnormalities which have taken root. Even within our bodies, there is a flow, similar to the Lifestream. Geostigma is the fight with the evil substances with have invaded it."

"...Hunh?" Zack said, looking completely confused. "Vin, I'm not that smart. Small words? Please?" he said, raising his free hand into a supplicating gesture and looking desperate. "Flow like the Lifestream? Abnormalities? Evil substance? _What_?"

Vincent looked like he wanted to rub his temples, but just look upwards briefly before he sighed. "Evil substances. Atoms of Sephiroth. Genetic memories of Jenova. Call them what you will."

Zack gave him a blank look.

Vincent sighed again and rubbed the bridge of his nose briefly before he continued. "Geostigma is caused by the parts of Jenova still within you. Which is why whatever happened impacted the children, Cloud, and those three."

"Oh," Zack said, nodding quickly, his eyes getting wide. "_That's_ why you told me to stay out of the water! 'Cause it might hit me?"

Vincent nodded his head.

"Did you see what happened? Any idea how to fix this? The long-haired one said _Cloud_ did it."

"Cloud?" Vincent said, frowning slightly. "I got there only a little before you did today. I was nearby."

"You were nearby?" Zack said, blinking, and tightening his grip on Cloud's shoulders. That was it, he was getting Vincent a cell phone even if he had to strap it to the man--the gods knew Vincent had enough straps and buckles that Zack wouldn't have a hard time finding a place to put it. If he'd known for a second Vincent was out here and had been able to contact him... "Wait, why?" Zack said, looking confused. "Why would you be out _here_? Yeah, sure, OK, you're not exactly the most sociable person and so it's not like you're gonna be living in a city or anything and I'm glad you were here, but--"

"I'm often in this area, so I noticed when they came," Vincent said flatly, cutting Zack off.

Zack gave Vincent a sharp look. "Because _she's_ here, right? Lucrecia?"

Vincent looked away, and Zack sighed faintly. "Vin, I'm really glad you were here, but, uh...you know that's not _healthy_, right?

Vincent gave him a sharp, narrow-eyed look, his eyes flicking from Zack to Cloud and then back, and the look faded into his normal, blandly expressionless one. "You're not really one to talk," he said softly, and Zack blinked in utter bafflement, not quite sure how to take that or what in Hel's name Vincent was getting at.

"...Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah, so, anyway," Zack said, dismissing Vincent's cryptic remark as 'typical Vinnie,' "what about those three clones?"

"Fragments," Vincent said, his voice low. "They're not clones."

Zack blinked. "What? What does that mean? Fragments?"

"They are fragments of Sephiroth, shaped by Jenova."

"...Vincent, how do you know all this? Seriously, how do you know that?" Zack said, staring at him with his jaw hanging open.

Vincent smiled, faintly. "Once a Turk," he said, and Zack rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have your freaky Turk ways. Anyway. They're fragments of Sephiroth? How is Jenova going to do anything with _pieces_? I don't get it."

"Perhaps 'fragments' isn't the right way to think of them. They're closer to...larvae."

"...Ew," Zack said, making a face. "I think I liked 'fragments' better. No mental images that way."

Vincent got the tired look he seemed to get all the time when Zack was talking to him. "Fragments. And what they're after is Jenova. Or rather, Jenova's head."

"What," Zack said, his voice flat, then he shook his head vehemently. "No, no, no, no, no, we killed her, remember? We got rid of Jenova! Her and Sephiroth!"

"Just as Sephiroth is not gone forever, neither is his abominable mother," Vincent said, turning to stare over at the truck, and the children huddled together in the back. "And they are looking for her head. For what, I don't know, nor do I want to contemplate what they will do should they attain it. But make no mistake, they will go to any extreme to do so." Vincent's eyes narrowed, and he continued staring at the children. "Tseng and Elena found the head."

"What?" Zack said, tightening his arm around Cloud's shoulder. Cloud didn't move or respond, but right then, Zack needed something to hold on to.

"They brought them here, tortured half to death," Vincent said softly. "I was able to help them, but...I don't know."

"_Torture_? And they found her--fuck, _that_ was why Rufus tried to enlist me," he said bitterly. "That bastard. Trying to send me out to the bandersnatches coated in barbecue sauce again," he said, nearly snarling.

"If the fragments are able to get Jenova's head, it could be enough."

"For what?"

"To make them whole vessels instead of simply fragments of one."

"Stop talking in riddles, Vince," Zack said, swallowing. "I _think_ I know what you're saying, but I don't _want_ what I'm thinking to be right. So prove me an idiot, please."

"Despite the majority of the time, about this, I fear you are not an idiot."

"...They wanna bring Sephiroth back. They wanna destroy the world."

Vincent nodded. "That's what it seems."

Zack shut his eyes and dropped his head on top of Cloud's. "Shit. Just...shit, Vincent. Seph was nearly able to take over Cloud, even after Aerith...and if they managed to hollow him out again--" he said, and his words ran dry. He began digging at his hair with his free hand, his thoughts beginning to spin wildly.

"Zack. Take care of him," Vincent said softly, nodding at Cloud and trying to cut off Zack's panic before it began. "Unlike before, _Cloud_ did this, you said so yourself. He did something to one of them, and the backlash got him as well, so this is _not the same_," he said sharply, and Zack appreciated Vincent's attempts--but he knew better; he'd seen this before.

And more than anything else...he'd seen Cloud's eyes. Mako-green and cat-eyed, and by all the gods, he knew what that meant, and even worse, what it _might_ mean.

"Take care of him until he come back. And I'll take the children back to Midgar," Vincent said, nodding once.

"Thanks. I owe you," Zack said, the words on auto-pilot and thoughts swirling around the clones--fragments--trying to bring Sephiroth back with Jenova's head, and Cloud's Sephiroth eyes. "Tifa is gonna _kill me_."

It was a brainless non sequitur and he knew it. But it took the edge off the panic battering him.

And as quickly as he could joke, he sobered. "Vin," Zack started, frowning up slightly. "There's...I gotta make a phone call," he said, his arm tightening around Cloud without him realizing he had done it.

Vincent frowned for a second, then nodded suddenly. "Tifa," he said, and it wasn't a question.

Zack nodded. "Yeah. I have to call her. She needs to...I should tell her...I need to warn her," he finally settled on.

Vincent nodded again, and Zack carefully leaned Cloud against one of the odd trees that made up the forest--he'd been holding on to Cloud so much Cloud was slumped over against him, and his head was lolling on Zack's shoulder. He tried to make Cloud comfortable, and Vincent watched him doing this with a look on his face that Zack couldn't interpret--not that he could usually figure out what the third member of the Brood Vortex was ever thinking, and not that he really _cared_ just then. As he stood up, he patted Cloud's head softly. "Be back soon, kid. Feel free to wake up if you miss me," he said, trying for a grin and hoping it worked.

It didn't.

He walked just far enough away to still be close enough to keep an eye on Cloud, but out of earshot of Denzel and Vincent. This wasn't going to be an easy call, and the _last_ thing he wanted was an audience. And he knew it was stupid, being so determined to keep Cloud in sight, but he figured better safe than sorry--he'd already fucked up once by not keeping Cloud close enough, and he wasn't making that mistake again.

And dragging his feet like this wasn't doing him any good, he thought, and pulled out his PHS. The home number was on speed-dial, and judging by how quickly she picked up Tifa must have been waiting by the phone.

"Hello?" she said quickly, and he had a pretty good idea what kind of death grip she had to have had on the phone.

"Hey, you miss me?" he said, his mouth quirking up in a grin even though she couldn't see it, and knowing that was going to be about the only brevity in the conversation.

"Zack! Oh, thank the gods!" she said, and the relief in her voice made what Zack was going to have to say all the harder.

"I got them," he said. "Cloud and Denzel. Vincent is going to bring Denzel and all the other kids those nuts took back," Zack said, shifting his grip on the phone and looking over at Denzel who had gone over and was now crouching by Cloud, his arms wrapped around his knees and doing that stoic thing that Zack didn't think any kid that young should be so good at. "When he gets there, he can fill you in about the Sephiroth...clones, fragments, whatever. If you can, get a hold of everyone else."

"Already done," she said. "I was calling people all night. Even Yuffie's on her way from Wutai. The only one I couldn't get was Vincent, and that's because he doesn't have a phone, but it sounds like he found you."

"Yeah, and thank the gods he was here."

There was a long silence, before Tifa swallowed thickly. "What about Cloud?"

Zack's shoulder's slumped. "He's...I got him, but...I don't know what they did to him, Tifa. There's no mako around here, anywhere, he shouldn't be...but he's--"

"Bring him home," Tifa said suddenly.

"I'm going to take him by the church," Zack said, shaking his head. Tifa'd been in terrible shape the first time she saw Cloud when he was mako-poisoned, and she'd sometimes looked ready to cry when she looked at him, until he woke up again. This was ripping him up enough, no need to put anyone else through this. "He always...before, he always seemed closer to coming out of it there, so..."

"Bring him _home_, Zack!" Tifa yelled. "Don't take him to the church, don't stay out there in the...in the fucking woods; I want you to bring him _home_!"

"It's not safe, Tifa!" Zack yelled back, his nerves frayed. "His eyes, Tifa, oh gods, his eyes--" he said, and the words cut off. He swallowed hard, trying to think of how to even phrase it in a way that wouldn't send either one of them off the deep end. "Like Sephiroth's," he finally said tightly. "But blown out and. it's just not safe yet! But the church, maybe--" he said, and trailed off, feeling desperate. If there was anywhere, _anywhere_, where they had a chance of Cloud pulling through whatever the Sephiroth clone had done, it had to be there, where Aerith had been and maybe still was, somehow. Cloud always went there to get himself together, and Zack couldn't think of anything else. "It was Aerith's place," he said softly. "And if there's anyone who could help him now--" he started, then trailed off.

Tifa had sucked in a harsh breath as soon as Zack had said 'Sephiroth,' and there was only a long, painful silence now. She finally took a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice wobbled a bit before going steady. "Y--you know tomorrow's Saturday, right? Marlene's going to be mad if you miss Iraira-man. It won't be Saturday morning unless the two of you are jumping around singing the theme song in your pajamas with...with Cloud threatening to blow up the TV and yelling at you to put on some pants. So...so you and _Cloud_ had better be here tomorrow morning," she said, and Zack smiled a little. It felt fragile and wrong, but it was all he had right then, and this was all either of them had--this tiny bit of normalcy. She hadn't said it outright, there was no way she could have, but he knew Tifa well enough to know what she was saying--not to bring back Cloud, but to bring back _Cloud_.

"On it," he said. "After all, I can't miss the big season finale coming up! Tomorrow's the first of a two parter!"

Tifa's laugh wasn't quite _right_, but he was damned glad to hear it. "The heavens forbid," she said. He heard her swallowing, and he sort of wished he could give her a hug.

Odin knew he sort of felt like he could do with one himself right then.

\--

_And from the fragments, from the sparks: memory._

\--

_The place is familiar; he feels like he has been here before, but--_

_Of course it's familiar; it's home. But he left here, long ago,_

_After Gast_

_To become something better_

_The place is familiar; on some level, he knows that he is _home._ But he...he does not want to be here. There is something about the place that sets him at unease, but--_

_\--he ran away, that was it; went all the way to Midgar_

_\--find your Promised Land--_

_to become something more, to become a_

_but he has failed, hasn't become what he intended; he does not want to be here. The place feels, somehow, like failure._

_But he is here, and it is so _familiar.

_And he wants to go home, to his mother._

_But his mother is--_

_died in childbirth_

_killed by ShinRa_

_My mother is..._

_And my father..._

_This place is so_ familiar.

_It is_...home.

\--

He wanted to go _home_. He wanted to go home and for everything to be like it was.

Denzel leaned against the glass of the window, staring at the forest as it thinned out as they drove towards Midgar. He tightened his jaw and just stared out and felt tears burning at his eyes, and blinked to try and stop them. He was a boy and too old to cry. Boys weren't supposed to cry, but it didn't stop the ones that were starting to drip out despite his best efforts.

The man in red--Vincent--didn't say anything, and he was glad for that.

\--

_It is home, and he has found her, found his mother. But...but she has been betrayed, she's gone, and there is only the smell of ash and a crumpled body--_

_\--frozen in mako, experimented on and made into a monster, she was--_

_\--an organism that was apparently dead was found in a 2000 year old geological stratum. Professor Gast named that organism Je--_

_\--confirmed to be an Ancient---X Year, X Month, X Day. Jenova Project approved. The use of Mako Reactor 1 approved for use._

_My mother's name is_

_the -- Project._

_Is this just a coincidence?_

_Professor Gast--_

_father, they killed my father--_

_\--Why didn't you tell me anything? Why did you die?_

_Why did the traitors kill you, Mother?_

_Everything is burning, and he has to get to ShinRa Manor, to find out the truth and to have his revenge._

_Nibelheim--home--is burning, and there will be nothing left of the place that has always caused him so much pain. But he has to stop it, somehow, he and Zack..._

_But Zack is a traitor--_

_\--No, Zack would never--_

_"Cloud! Why did you kill the villagers? Why did you hurt Tifa? Answer me, Cloud!"_

_Villagers...wait, no, that didn't...why would he kill...and Tifa, he wouldn't hurt her; he had promised to protect--_

_You killed them, you killed them all, and Tifa...I promised I'd protect her, so we will stop you, Se--_

_"Mother, finally, we'll meet," he said, but suddenly there was the image of his mother, outside of her burning home, but no, mother, he was talking to Mother, she was in the tank, but..no, it..._

_"Cloud, what's gotten into you? I trusted, you!" Zack yelled, and it hurts, it feels like a punch, like a betrayal_

_traitor_

_and he reacts before he can think, drawing Masamune and attacking--_

_\--no, stop, why would I attack Zack? I wouldn't--_

_He blasts Zack into the lower floors of the reactor and follows, to finish the job and kill--_

_NO!_

_\--the traitor. And Zack is only human, only a SOLDIER 1st class, but he is different. Zack had said so himself and opened Cloud's eyes. And if Zack had trusted Cloud, well, Zack had betrayed that trust first, and that anger gets him through, almost silences the part saying this wrong, that in flashes sees through different eyes._

_Zack will pay for the betrayal, pay for being human--and pay he does; Cloud blasts Angeal's sword out of his hands and delivers a final blast, enough to knock Zack out, if not kill him. And the trooper--_

_Zack! No! No, I'm not going to let him get away with this!_

_\--is nothing. What is more important now is Mother, and he turns to see her, sleeping in Hojo's pod--_

_That's not my mother, Mom's is...she...he killed her!_

_And I can't let him do this, I can't let him!_

_He rushes for Zack's sword and sneaks towards him, knowing this is his only chance, because he's only a trooper, and Cl--Seph--he has already beaten Zack. And then it is a rush, and the feel of the buster sword cutting through flesh--_

_Sh--he looks down, to see Zack's sword cutting through him, and it hurts--_

_\--and it hurts, how did this happen, how did he--I--he--?_

_Tifa, I have to check on Tifa, he thinks, and rushes out._

_It hurts, it somehow hurts, and he's furious; how could that trooper have managed to do this to him? But no matter, he'll pay as well, like all the humans..._

_He goes after him, because this isn't over, not yet. "Someone like you--!" he yells, furious._

_"Cloud, finish Sephiroth!" he hears Zack yell, and it must be a joke._

_He attacks, but can't land a blow, and it's only to be expected, because there's no way a trooper could hope to hold his own against him._

_"Don't get overconfident," he says, and ends this farce now. Masamune--the Buster sword--Masamune is firm within his hands, and he attacks. Masamune cleaves through the trooper's flesh easily, and this is the end._

_No, I won't let this end now, he'll pay--_

_\--all of the humans will pay--_

_And it's impossible, the trooper is pulling himself forward, towards him, and now they are face to face and--_

_Turns to look back, as best as is possible, to see who did this, and--_

_\--looks into his own eyes, at his own face, and the world begins to_ glitch.

\--

He cradled Cloud against him as he rode back, slower than he wanted but not daring to go much faster, not with Cloud passed out like he _still_ was. So he had Cloud side-straddle on the bike, Cloud's head nodding against his chest as Zack kept one arm around him and the other steering home, and for all he knew it was stupid, he kept up a steady stream of babble and kept looking down whenever they hit a clear patch of road, hoping to see Cloud blinking awake or _something_.

But no, every time he looked down, it was the same, Cloud's eyes still shut and his face unnaturally pale in the moonlight, like he was a ghost or something, and when Zack had that realization he damned near drove them off the road. And stupid as it was, he pulled over and stopped, shutting off the engine and everything, just to make sure Cloud was _breathing_.

Zack felt a kind of relief at Cloud's still-aliveness that almost made him ashamed of having been so paranoid. Almost, but not quite, because Cloud was too still, not sleeping but something else. It was the preternatural stillness of mako-poisoning, only it _wasn't_, it was _different_, it was something else, and some part of Zack was thrown. "Off to rescue my princess, eh?" Zack said, Tifa's angry words coming back to him because all he could think of was one of the old tales his father used to tell him, of the Stolen Maiden who was encased in a castle of ice, pale and frozen until the spell was broken. In the moonlight, under the strange lights of the forest, Cloud seemed like he was three-fourths taken by the Snow Woman, skin washed white as the glowing white trees. "I wish it'd be as easy to wake you up as it is in the old tales, kid," he said, then sighed, and touched his forehead against Cloud's. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice mournful and full of self-reproach. "I _knew_ those three were out there and they were coming after us. I shouldn't have left you alone. I'm so sorry."

\--

_And the memories fell apart in sharp flashes of static and white, the static coming faster and faster as the fragments didn't fit, didn't--_

_he would never, it didn't make sense--it--_

_\--it_ hurt; _the shards and sparks of memory made his head feel as if it would explode; there was too much that jarred, that clashed, that wasn't_ right--

_He struggled against it, and for the barest moment, he could feel both the feel of a book in his gloved hands and the feel of something_\--someone--_against his cheek, something warm against his forehead and soft words in a voice that was familiar but too far away to be anything but a murmur like water. But it was enough, it was almost enough, and he opened his eyes to a blue the same blue as the sky, the sky he had never seen--but I have, I have, the sky is so blue, at home, it's--but could never fear. "Zack...?" he managed, and then he sank back again, the memories becoming stronger and taking over; a fragment of Zack's voice, "--you're diffe--," and the smell of the flames dragging him back in._

\--

"...Zack...?" Cloud whispered, so faintly that had the bike still been on or Zack not so close, he would have missed it.

"Cloud? You awake? Cloud?" he said, startling. And briefly, Cloud's eyes slid open, just enough for Zack to see a faintly mako-tinged blue, startlingly blue in his colorless face, and unfocused round pupils.

Pupils that blew back out into those green, cat-slitted eyes before Cloud went limp again, eyes closing as he slid back into whatever null space he had been in just as Zack gritted his teeth at the crappy timing of his Geostigma deciding to have a mini-flare up.

"Keep fighting it, kid," Zack whispered hoarsely, when he got his breath back, touching his head against Cloud's again and shutting his eyes, pulling Cloud into a tight hug, ignoring how much it hurt to have Cloud pressed against where his Geostigma was manifesting. "Keep fighting and come _back_. We need you here a whole lot more than wherever you are does."

He stayed like that, for a moment, wishing he could pass some of his own will to Cloud, hoping just being there would help because it was all he could do. "I need you here," he said softly, the words coming out a soft, low, and bitter laugh, and he hated how helpless he felt and how _fragile_ Cloud seemed. "So _please_. Don't do this to me."

Cloud didn't stir, and Zack sighed and finally raised his head, settling Cloud against him again as he restarted the bike. "You have to wake up. You wouldn't leave me to face Tifa alone, would you? That'd just be cruel!" he said, trying to make a joke. He suddenly felt tired, and it just wasn't worth the effort any more. He rested his cheek against the top of Cloud's head in a moment of weakness, breathing in the faint the smell of burnt wood and lilies that somehow seemed to have worked itself into Cloud's hair and the underlying mako-tinged scent that was _Cloud_ before he straightened and set them back off towards Midgar; off towards _home_.

\--

_Even from the time he was a child, he knew he was different. He knew. He could always feel the Planet, whispering to him, and he knew that he was meant for something greater than this, some higher purpose. But he had always been so alone._

_He knew, somehow, that he wasn't human. And others knew it; it explained why he had always been alone._

_Aside from...Tifa had always--Gast had always...and then Angeal, but then..._

_But now he was alone._

_Almost._

_"No, unfortunately. You're a monster. You were born out of the---the greatest monster of all," the man--he knew him, he...Genesis, yes, he had seen him before, and...they had been...he is Genesis, and he is also mad._

_He easily dodges the Firas Genesis throws, but his words are where the true danger has always been, and he has somehow forgotten that._

_"The -- Project, is the general term used for the experiments that used -- cells."_

_He felt stunned. That was...his mother's name, but..._

_"Poor Cloud, you never met your mother--_

_\--no, I have, she's...I saw her, just a little while ago--_

_\--no, I have, but she died, she died right in front of me, crumpled up when Nibe--when we fled--when--_

_mother is dead; they killed her._

_\--"Trying to remember what she looked like is painful, isn't it?"_

_"Genesis, stop it!" Zack yelled._

_"--was discovered in the stratum from over 2000 years ago. A monster. Angeal was born out of -- Project G, and just like me born a monster. And Project C was a project to make the perfect monster."_

_"You're trying to confuse me right now, aren't you? Or...or is it the "truth" that I've been looking for? Just...go decay, Genesis," he says, full of hatred for someone he had once, in a strained and uncertain way, considered a friend._

_Genesis sneered. "I get it now. It's only to be expected of a perfect monster," he finished, and the words stung like betrayal._

_But he had to know; had to find the truth--and the only place to do that is to search where things began; in Hojo's labs in ShinRa Manor...to relieve everything Hojo has done to him, but through it to maybe find the truth._

_He will see no one; everyone is a traitor except those who have the truth, and the only ones with the truth are the dusty books, which have no reason to lie. The days pass, but he ignores it, ignores the needs of his body as he tries to understand, as he goes through everything Hojo has collected. And by the end, he sees both ShinRa and the humans, all of them, for what they are--traitors. He had known that one day, ShinRa would abandon him, make him a 'casualty in battle', but to see what the humans had done to his kind, to the Cetra, the Ancients, how they had squandered all of the sacrifices they had made and forgotten their very existence, and how he was the last; they had killed his mother, she had died right in front of him--_

_His mother was dead, and they would pay for this._

_She had wanted the planet, and together, they would--_

_He can feel the books in his hands, as he reads through, learns the truth and what he is; what ShinRa has made him when--_

_\--but ShinRa didn't make...I'm not--_

_\--when they made him a SOLDIER, in those years of experiments. Everything they did was cruel; he was nothing but a sample to Professor Hojo, and Hojo pushed him, and Zack, the only other First now, past the limits of human endurance._

_\--what ShinRa has made him, into something no longer human._

_You're not the Cloud I know!_

_Because now he is stronger, better, and he will never be Hojo's sample again, and will destroy anyone that tries to take him back. And to protect himself, and mother, he will take the planet; he will go with her and find his Promised Land._

_And he will burn it all--is burning it all--and will destroy everything...He casts Firaga in the library, and is surrounded by the flames, by the beginning of the destruction of world that ShinRa and the humans have brought upon themselves. First this library, then this cursed 'home' he hates already, and then, he will make all of ShinRa's world pay, for what they had done to Mother...and to him, for the years of torture they called "experiments" that had left him like this. They had made him, after all, made him a mo--_

_"Now that's enough of that," an unfamiliar but strangely_ familiar _woman's voice said lightly, and everything changed._

\--

It was too familiar, was the problem. It was like the time Sephiroth had almost managed to take over Cloud the first time--it had left Cloud...hollowed out, almost--almost as if what had started to fill back in with Tifa's constant trying and Aerith's gentle words had all been emptied out, leaving nothing but vague shadows.

He didn't want to think about what could happen; about if Cloud woke up and he was _hollow_ again.

"You've gotta be alright," Zack said, keeping up a steady stream of words as they drove. Aerith had done that, constantly just _talking_ to Cloud. He didn't know if it had done any good, but it hadn't hurt, either, and right then, silence was the last thing Zack wanted.

Zack wasn't one to cry. In recent years--and he didn't count those years where time had no meaning in the tank as anything other than 'gone'--he could count on one hand how many times he had actually cried. He had cried for Angeal, he had cried for Aerith, he had cried for Cissnei when she died in the ShinRa Tower collapse, and he had cried for Sephiroth--not for the madman he had become, but who Sephiroth had _been_: the man who had looked so lost in Nibelheim, the man who had laughed at him in Junon, the man who had refused to turn on his friends in Midgar.

The tears for Sephiroth had caught him by surprise. They had come out of nowhere, the first time he had found Cloud hiding out in the church. He hadn't much been surprised that Cloud had been there, once he actually found him--it made so much sense that Zack had literally smacked himself for not having figured it out sooner, because between the fact that that had been where they had hidden out before getting dragged into the resistance when Tifa of all people had fallen through the roof of the church during a mission to sabotage one of the reactors, so he had to have known on some level that it was 'safe,' and, well, with the whole 'Aerith' thing, of _course_ he would have gone to the church.

Cloud had been in the church, and had gotten the wary tonberry-in-the-headlights look when Zack showed up, so Zack had sat down near Cloud carefully, because it was _never_ safe to approach the tonberry in the headlights, and Cloud had that "tonberry-thinking-about-its-butcher-knife" kind of overwhelmed, wary look.

There had been a long silence between them, stretching out in a way that should have been uncomfortable but wasn't--there had been too much time, after all, where there had been only silence between them because Cloud couldn't talk. Zack was so used to just having Cloud's presence there that it was comfortable in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on.

No, more than _comfortable,_ it was more that was _familiar_, and it was comfortable _now_ because it was different, because now he could talk to him and Cloud could actually _answer_. All of the desperation of before was gone.

Before he could think of something to say, Cloud had surprised him by talking. "You fell through the roof here, didn't you? That's...that's how that pew over there got broken."

Cloud had looked so...confused and happy, all at the same time. He had lost so much that any kind of memory, even if it wasn't _his_, was something he reached for almost desperately.

"Yeah," Zack had said, smiling a little at the memory. "I thought Aerith was an angel or something when I woke up."

"I remember," Cloud had said softly, and then had suddenly gone bright, Ifrit's-flame _red_. "Aerith. That was _Aerith_," he'd corrected, blinking really fast. "_I_ met you at...at... _Anyway_," he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. "_Aerith_ met you when you fell through the roof.

"So...Um...How...what happened? To make you fall through the roof like that?" Cloud had asked, sounding almost desperate and like he'd wanted to beat his head against something hard, and Zack had found himself fighting a snicker at Cloud managing to flail without moving at all. For all things were pretty messed up sometimes, Zack'd had to admit that there were times when it was hilarious--even if sometimes it was laugh-or-cry kind of hilarity, the kind of hilarity that had more than a slight touch of the _hysterical_. Watching Cloud doing his flailing-without-moving thing was oddly cute, even though knew if he ever said it Cloud would kick him in the shins. _Hard_.

Besides...the embarrassed flailing thing meant that he wasn't brooding, and that was always a step up. If nothing else, it meant he was engaged with the outside world, not focused so internally that it hurt Zack to watch.

"You never told me..._Aerith_. You never told _Aerith_," Cloud had finally managed to get out, still so red he was blushing all the way to the roots of his hair.

"Yeah...I never really did, did I," Zack'd said, surprised. It had never come up, strangely enough. "I was on a mission," he'd started, and when Cloud had given him his "...?" look, Zack had latched onto it, seeing it as a way to give Cloud an out for whatever had been making him turn that interesting shade of fuchsia.

And so he started talking about that mission. And then he got to talking about Sephiroth, and that phone call, when Sephiroth said he intended to fail the mission to eliminate Angeal, and the next thing he knew, something in his chest had tightened up as he suddenly remembered back _then_, back when Sephiroth had still been _human_, and...things just went downhill from there.

Everything after that had happened too quickly for Zack to have really become friends with Sephiroth in his own right, but they'd worked together before, and he knew him through Angeal. There had been something so _human_ in Sephiroth, once you actually started to spend time with him and see past the cold exterior. It had surprised Zack, when Sephiroth had said he planned for them to blow the mission, and it was then that he'd actually stopped just blindly looking up to Sephiroth like everyone did and had wanted to actually find out something about the person hiding back behind those impassive eyes. And after Junon, well, the connections were there, tentative but _there_.

And then came Nibelheim.

But before that, Sephiroth had been a man, a man with friends he'd had no intention of betraying, a man destroyed by ShinRa's lines and manipulations, and Zack could never forget that it had been his stupid, stupid, _stupid_ "You mean you're different?" that had been the nail in that man's coffin.

And he'd _cried_, the tears coming with no warning and surprising him, the depth of the emotions surprising him as well, all of it suddenly just coming out at _once_\--all of the people he'd lost, all the _things_ he'd lost. Everyone, _everyone_ he had cared about or had even started to care about had died, and the weight of it had suddenly been more than he could take. He'd shut his eyes and covered his face with his hand, trying to make himself _stop_, but it hadn't worked.

Cloud had surprised him. He hadn't said anything at all, but had reached out and put his arm across Zack's shoulders, pulling Zack to him and let Zack cry. And Zack'd had no idea how he'd gone from that, leaning against Cloud almost despite himself, to how he'd eventually found himself, waking up with his head on Cloud's lap, feeling wrung out but also feeling _better_, like a weight he hadn't known about and had carried for too long was. well, not _gone_, but manageable.

There was a long silence after he woke up, neither of them moving, Cloud's hand warm and still on his shoulder aside from his thumb moving in a slow and steady stroking, and Zack debated whether to get embarrassed or not.

"Ready to go home now?" Cloud had finally said, softly, before Zack had made up his mind.

"Depends," Zack had said, deciding there was no point in getting embarrassed over the whole thing. He pulled himself up and blinked a few times before leveling as pointed a look as he could at Cloud. "You?"

Cloud had looked away, but there was a faint ghost of a smile on his face, as if he knew Zack had no intention of letting him stay there. "...Yeah, I guess so."

"Let's go then," Zack had answered, and jumped up. Cloud was moving much slower, and Zack grinned down at him. "Your butt fall asleep or something?"

"My _leg_ fell asleep, jackass. Your big head is heavy," Cloud said, giving Zack a glare that had no real heat in it at all.

"That's 'cause it's full of rocks," Zack'd shot back cheerfully with a grin, holding a hand out to help Cloud up. Cloud took it without hesitation and Zack pulled him up and slung his arm over Cloud's shoulder. Cloud almost stumbled and he gave Zack a dirty look that Zack promptly ignored. "Dunno about you, kid, but I'm _starving_. Let's hit McMoogles then go home. Tifa's gonna yell at both of us, so we might as well not be hungry when she's lecturing."

"_McMoogles_?!" Cloud'd said, making a face as Zack dragged him out to the door. "What about Cactuar Hut or something? Or maybe _real_ food? There's a _great_ Wutai place that just opened."

"But McMoogles has the new Iraira-man Kiddie McMoogie sets! Marlene wants the iraira-watch!"

"You mean _you_ want it," Cloud had shot back, trying to extricate himself from what had turned into a headlock.

"Same dif," Zack'd said cheerfully, and then, softly, "Modeoheim. _We_ met at Modeoheim. We were on a mission and the helicopter crashed. You were the only one who could keep up with me in the snow. Even Tseng couldn't."

"...Ah," Cloud said, his voice barely a whisper, not fighting the headlock and getting that strained look, that precursor to entering the Brood Vortex look, and going still.

Until Zack had yelled "McMoogles time!" and noogied him, and then Cloud was squawking and squirming and flailing at Zack like he was _supposed_ to be, everything a little bit more normal.

Since that day, Cloud had gone to that church an innumerable number of times, but Zack hadn't cried--he hadn't _had_ to; he'd done his mourning for the people he had hadn't let himself mourn for, for the _things_ he hadn't let himself mourn for--the mistakes, the lost years, all of it--and he figured himself done.

He wasn't any kind of crier; the few times he'd ever cried being ones when no one could have faulted him for crying, not with that much death and loss.

He wasn't a crier, and that was why the fact that right now his vision was getting blurry caught him by surprise.

"Cloud, kid," he finally said, his voice strained. He had been talking, just keeping up that steady stream of words, when all of a sudden, something just cracked. "I can't do this any more, y'know? I can't. I can't. I can't...I just _can't_. So you've got to wake up and you've got to be _normal_, you've got to be _Cloud_, because...because I can't do it anymore. Please, _please_ don't make me have to...don't make me have to kill you, too. Because, fuck, I can't...I just _can't_."

He pulled over again, because dying in a bike wreck was not the way to go, and pinched the bridge of his nose tightly between two fingers, trying to stop the fact that it felt like he was about to completely and utterly _lose_ it.

It didn't work.

\--

_"Honestly. You were doing fine up until now," the woman said, her voice faintly chiding. "But you always did go that one step too far, from what I've seen. You had more than enough people with_ that _in their heads; you don't need Cloud, too. I've got _dibs!"

_There was a rush; a rush of water like a wall, rushing in and dousing the flames of ShinRa Manor. The manor itself melted away, the black and gloom giving way to an almost blinding white, to a white-skied meadow with lilies blooming around a fragrant lake; the scent of flowers taking away that of the burning wood._

_"...Aerith?" Cloud asked uncertainly, and heard only a faint laugh that was unfamiliar somehow and yet not. A faint laugh, and the sound of water lapping around him. He stood in a pool of water, like the one before, but instead of being black and befouled it was clean and pure, and the scent of lilies wafted all around._

_A part of him found the smell disgusting, but for another part...for another, it felt like coming home._

_"It's time for you to wake up now," that soft, familiar voice said. He looked around, but there was no one." You worked very, very hard, and I'm proud of you. But it's time for you to wake up."_

_Invisible hands, light and soft, placed themselves on his head, and then gently pushed him under the water and_ out.

\--

Opening his eyes was more of a struggle than it should have been. It was as if he had been hit with Slow, only one more powerful than even a fully-mastered materia was capable of. He felt completely exhausted and his head was pounding and...strange; unsettled and feeling almost brittle, as if a wrong thought would make something shatter. He felt like he had been taped together--or rather, glued back together and it hadn't finished setting yet.

It was a struggle to open his eyes, a struggle to wake up, but he had to; had to wake up enough to find somewhere _safe_\--

He rolled his head up more through force of will than anything else, and frowned slightly, everything suddenly incongruous because that was Zack, but he was older, he was out of uniform, he--

"Zack," he said softly, and when Zack looked down at him, wide-eyed and startled, the moment of incongruity was gone and Zack was _Zack_, the Zack _he_ knew, and Cloud knew that he was _safe_.

\--

It was almost like something out of a dream--or like the waking from a bad nightmare--when he felt Cloud move.

_Please gods, whoever is listening, please, let him be awake and please let him be _Cloud, Zack thought, and dared to look down.

Cloud's eyes were still that same bright, mako-green...but his pupils were round. Slightly unfocused, but the sheer relief the washed through Zack made the color of his eyes seemed almost irrelevant.

"Where...where are...wait, where are we? Where did you come from?" Cloud said, sounding disoriented. And exhausted--his eyes were open, but it was only barely, and the sickly pale color of his skin wasn't just caused by the weird trees.

"I came after you," Zack said carefully. "One of those three had attacked you in--"

"The church," Cloud said shaking his head, as if to clear it. "Yeah. He got me there, and then...the kids, where are the kids?" Cloud said woozily, seeming to struggle to focus--struggling and failing; Zack didn't think he'd seen Cloud look so wiped out since--since a time he wasn't going to think about, because this wasn't the same thing; couldn't be the same thing, he wouldn't let it. "And Denzel, he was--dumb kid shouldn't have been there, thought they were gonna fix him--"

Zack felt all the tension inside of him drain out almost instantly in his relief, and the next thing he knew, he hugging Cloud, laughing from the sheer relief of it all. Cloud batted at him once, barely, and then gave up, letting out a sigh and relaxing against Zack in exhaustion.

"The kids are all OK. Vincent showed up right when I did, and we took care of things. OK, he took the kids, hotwired the Sephiroth-larvae things' truck and busted out of there while I was fighting with one of them, and they're on their way to Midgar. You were kinda out of the count, so I was bringing you back, but I was going to take you to the Church and hope you woke up there, but now that you're--awake? Kinda?--maybe we should go home?" Zack said, barely able to keep himself still, because Cloud was looking like he was _Cloud_.

"Yeah, we...we should...head--" was as far as Cloud got before his head dropped again onto Zack's chest.

Zack grinned and this time managed not to let out a whoop--Cloud was definitely _asleep_ and nothing more because that was _snoring_ Cloud was doing, and after the day he'd obviously had, Zack couldn't begrudge him it, and the gods knew as big as those bags under Cloud's eyes were that he needed the sleep. Cloud had pushed himself to the limit, that much was obvious, and it was fine for him to sleep now because he was him, he was _Cloud_, so it would be OK. It wasn't the same at all.

And none of the relief meant, of course, that Zack was going to let this slide so wouldn't start calling Cloud "Sleeping Princess" after the princess who could fall asleep anywhere in the old tale. It was practically a mandate from the _Heavens_ to start in on _that_ one.

He hugged Cloud again, got a sleepy, unintelligible and decidedly _grouchy_ mumble of some sort in response, which was followed by Cloud shifting closer in his sleep to get comfortable.

Zack wondered for a second if his grin was going to break his face, then took off towards Midgar.

\--

Even by the time they got back to 7th Heaven, Cloud was still passed out in what wasn't exactly a _natural_ sleep, but was a lot better than whatever weird _thing_ had happened before, and Zack did his best not to think about how much Cloud had been like that before, once, for a day or so after Aerith died--that one time, it had been as if as soon as they got somewhere _safe_, Cloud had completely zonked out for a day, but when he woke up...well, he'd woken up and _stayed up_ and had been walking and talking and not mako-poisoned. And this--well, it wasn't _quite_ the same. Cloud had woken up _some_, and the last time, once he found a place to hole up, he just _wouldn't_. So it wasn't the same.

Zack told himself that, until he could believe it.

Zack also did his best not to think about the fact that Cloud's eyes had changed colors, because while they were green, at least they weren't like _Sephiroth's_ because Cloud had fought that off, like he always did, and Zack was counting whatever blessings he could.

...He was going to _kill_ those three.

Provided whatever had happened to Cloud hadn't knocked out the shrimpy one. Zack hadn't really been all that focused on anything but Cloud, but it looked like both of them had been down for the count.

_Good_, Zack thought. _You raised Leviathan's own storm on them for whatever they did, kid._

"He's asleep. And let him; I can't even imagine what those three put him through," Zack said, frowning and looking down at Cloud's face, and his grip on Cloud tightened unconsciously.

Tifa got a strange look on her face that only lasted an instant, something dark flashing across her eyes before it was gone.

"Where's Vin?" Zack asked as soon as he got down the stairs.

"Vincent? He left, right after he dropped off Denzel and told me about what happened," Tifa said, sighing. "He said he was going to go talk to Shinra."

"Oh, _that's_ gonna be awkward," Zack said, making a face.

"We need all the allies we can get right now," she said, looking about as thrilled with things as Zack did.

"Yeah, yeah, we do," Zack said, feeling tired.

"How is he?" Tifa said softly, nodding over towards the stairs.

"Out like a light," Zack said with a faint shake of his head, his shoulders slumping as he dropped into a chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. "I'm pretty sure they ran him through the ringer, but he apparently gave as good as he got."

"'Apparently'? What happened? And here, you look like you need this," she ended, passing him a bottle of Banora apple ale. "The gods know I do," she muttered under her breath. The argument from before had been dropped for now, even though things hung unsaid in the air, sharp and vibrating, now that Cloud had been taken care of. Tifa was pretty sure it was going to come back, but right now, it wasn't the time and they had bigger, more pressing concerns. It'd all be for moot, after all, if Cloud woke up _someone else_ this time, and that fear was so strong she could barely feel anything else at all, other than a sickening kind of _numb_.

"Sweet Shiva, do I need alcohol, and I don't know what happened to him," Zack said, and Tifa sat down across from him. "Everything happened before I got there, but I kinda think the little shrimp is the dangerous one because he was the one with Cloud and they were both KO'd, and the other two clones were freaking out," he said, a self-depreciating smile twisting one corner of his lips. The mini-Masamune he'd seen before had been a big clue, and this just kind of affirmed that yes, the shrimpy Sephiroth clone was the dangerous one. "It's _always_ the one with the sword."

"You don't say," Tifa said somewhat dryly as she opened her bottle.

He gave a self-depreciating shrug and scratched the back of his head. "I'm slow sometimes, you know that."

He grew serious suddenly. "He woke up a little bit, on the way before he really woke up. Cloud, I mean. He didn't say much, so it was almost like old times," he said bitterly, his hand tightening around the bottle as he remembered all too well what Cloud had been like for so long, mako-poisoned and almost comatose from it, with only moments of lucidity before slipping back into whatever mind-obliterating haze the mako had put him in. Cloud hadn't fully come out of the mako poisoning until Aerith's death; it had been like her dying had been the trigger to pull him out. "He knew who I was before he slipped out again. And when he came out of it and woke up, he _seemed_ all right, wanting to know about Denzel and the kids. He fell asleep before I could talk to him much, and I figured I should let him, at least until we got to a place with elixirs or something. He's wiped out on both fronts, from the look of things."

Tifa wasn't looking at him, just staring off into space. "Sleep, huh?" She looked down at the bottle in her hands. "I'm not sure it really says much if he knew who you were, though." She let out a snort of laughter under her breath that seemed more sad than anything else, and downed half of her bottle of ale at once. "I think he'll _always_ know who you are," Tifa said, staring at her thumb tracing the label on her bottle and still _not_ looking at _him_, and Zack wanted to kick himself very, very hard--Cloud had remembered him--_sort of_, and maybe only because of the way he had fragments of Aerith's memory--after the mako poisoning, but he hadn't really remembered Tifa at all.

Tifa swallowed thickly, closing her eyes and heaving a sigh. She bit her lip, looking as though she was debating something in her mind, when she suddenly seemed to just decide, and Zack began to seriously pray she wasn't going to rehash their argument from before, because he wasn't in any kind of shape to deal with it right then--the only thing he felt like he was in any shape to do was pull a Cloud and pass out asleep, because putting his head on the table and sleeping was starting to look like a more than doable option.

"You...you know he's...he's got this weird mix of hero worship of his own and...and love from Aerith," Tifa said, just biting the bullet and saying it.

Zack sighed and took a long swig of the ale before answering, feeling like he needed something a lot stronger than _this_. He needed shots of Gongagan moonshine or Costan tequila if this going the way it was looking. "Yeah. Yeah, I know."

Tifa's next words were mild. "And what are you going to do about it?"

Zack nearly dropped his bottle because this conversation--one he didn't even understand why they were _having_ right now--had just taken a decided ninety-degree turn from anything he had been expecting. If nothing else, it was a lot more civil than he had feared it might be. "'Do'? What do you mean 'what am I going to _do_ about it'?" he said, staring out her slightly open-mouthed and feeling perplexed.

Tifa stared at him. "I mean _exactly_ what I said, Zack." She sighed. "This just keeps dragging out on and on and on and on. Someone's got to do something."

"Why me?!" Zack said, hearing the desperate whine in his voice. "Why can't _you_...talk to him or something?!"

"I _have_," she said softly. "But...but he doesn't _remember_ me, Zack. Oh, he remembers feelings, he's said as much, but...all he really knows of _me_ are what happened last year. Nibelheim is completely _gone_. Any memories he has are as fake as what ShinRa made Nibelheim into," she said, and something in her voice cracked. "Just itty bitty pieces that _almost_ look like what once was there."

Zack faltered. "Tifa..." he started, putting the bottle down and reaching out without thinking about it to cover her hand with his own.

She didn't shrug him off, and he took that as a good sign.

"I...I don't want to press things, y'know?" He didn't know how to put into words anything else, how he was sure the two of them just being around giving a shit about the kid was in a way a kind of torment, keeping him pulled in two radically different directions that Cloud couldn't even understand himself or know what to do with. Sometimes Zack thought about just getting on his bike and _leaving_, but he just couldn't do that--he couldn't do it to Cloud, couldn't do it to Tifa, couldn't do it to _himself_.

"There's not pressing and then there's running away," she said, turning her hand so it held his as well, her hand warm and the touch a comfort despite everything. "And the Zack I know is a lot of things, but someone who runs away isn't one of them."

Zack groaned and thudded his head against the table. "Aww, c'mon, do you HAVE to put it that way? That's not fair!"

Tifa laughed. "Fair is your last name, not mine," she said.

"Well, you know, you _could_ just marry me, and--yeowch!" he yelped. He'd forgotten how _hard_ Tifa could kick.

"Stop that," she said, her voice full of a faint laughter.

"Yes'm," he said, looking up and giving her his best kicked-puppy look. She just raised her eyebrow at him, not buying it, and he thudded his head against the table again.

Things lapsed back into silence, and Zack sighed and bit the bullet. "Tifa..." Zack started, not knowing where to go with it, but knowing, like she said, that there was a difference between not pressing and running away, and he'd been doing a lot of running away. If they were putting everything out there, then it was time to really put everything out there, especially _now_. That argument from before had made it way too clear that they weren't all on the same page, or even using the same _book_, and they needed to be. He sat up. "Sometimes...sometimes Cloud remembers...well, things. Things he, kinda, y'know, _shouldn't_," he said awkwardly, stumbling over how to approach this whole mess, about the times Cloud wasn't Cloud and he wasn't Aerith _either_.

Tifa stared at him, blinking for a minute, then turned bright red, her eyes wide, and she finished off the rest of her bottle even faster than she'd drunk the first half before she started babbling. Zack stared back, _completely_ confused before Tifa's sudden embarrassed babbling--about how that must be awkward and, well, and how had that even come up and never mind she didn't want to know and um--sunk in.

"Not _THAT_ kind of thing!" he yelped, feeling his own face growing hot. "C'mon, Tifa!" He banged his head against the table again, this time wishing for a giant hole to open up under his feet, and then buried his face in his arms. "You big _pervert_! Get your brain out of the sewers, will you?!"

"Sh-shut up! It was _your_ fault, saying it like that! Wh-what _else_ could I think?" she said, her voice full of embarrassment.

He gave her a betrayed look and buried his face back in his arms, groaning. This was _not_ the way to be starting this conversation...or _any_ conversation, for that matter.

"So...um...what does he, um, remember, then?" she said, Tifa's face still Ifrit's-flame red.

He didn't even want to look up from his arms because he knew he still had to be as red-faced as Tifa, and because it would be _easier_ to not have to look at her when he said this. She had lost so much to Sephiroth; this would just kill her. "He...OK...Ifrit in a rainstorm, I don't even know how to start this. He...I don't think it's just him and Aerith in there," he finally said, tilting his head just enough so he could look up and see her.

"...what do you mean?" Tifa said, the blush fading as the blood seemed to drain out of her face.

"I think...I think he's got some of Sephiroth in him."

She frowned, hugging herself slightly for a moment. "Sephiroth? From...from the times Sephiroth took him over?"

He really wished he could have just said yes.As terrifying as that would have been, it would have been easy and it would have been something she would have understood, but...but it would have been running away.

He shook his head, sitting up and taking both her hands in his. "Yes. Well..._no_, but yes. Not exactly. Not just _that_ Sephiroth."

Tifa sat very still before her eyes got very, very wide, her slim fingers trembling under his, and he hated that it was his words that had caused this.

"Sometimes he...remembers things he shouldn't know, Tifa. Like...like he remembered that Angeal, the SOLDIER who trained me, used to call me 'Zack the Puppy'. Tifa, Cloud _never met Angeal_," he said, something in his voice sounding desperate. "Yeah, OK, he _sort of_ met a guy who had turned into an Angeal clone, but that was like for almost no time and oh, gods, I'm babbling and my train of thought's derailing." He stopped and took a deep breath and made himself concentrate. "Angeal was one of Sephiroth's best friends, and...and he...I...he...he died before Nibelheim happened," Zack said, tightening his grip on Tifa's hands, because it never got easier.

Tifa was tough. She didn't flinch or wince, just squeezed back lightly, not questioning.

"There's no way _Cloud_ could have known that. But _Sephiroth_ did."

"What do you think this all means? Especially since those three, Vincent said they were 'fragments'."

"I think," Zack said slowly, "that Cloud got the parts Sephiroth didn't want any more. Bits of who he was before Jenova and Nibelheim. But...but I haven't pushed it, Tifa," he said, hands tightening again. "I mean...what if he's got more, but doesn't remember it yet? What if he tries to see what he remembers and what drove Sephiroth batshit comes out and gets Cloud? You know he can't tell what's what--or _who_ is what--from any of that, and it doesn't fucking matter who anything happened to because in his head it's all _him_."

Tifa's hands were shaking again, her hands so small in his own, all the strength in them gone.

"And now, with all this..." Zack said, letting go of her hands and waving a hand in the air, as if to indicate all the madness going on now, "I'm _scared_, I'll admit it. I don't know what that little mini-Sephiroth did to him, or what it was he had to do to counter it, but it _can't_ be good."

A shuffling sound startled them both, and they looked to see Cloud, looking exhausted, start to come into the room, his gait unsteady.

"Cloud!" both of them yelled at the same time, jumping to their feet. Cloud ignored the both of them fussing at him and trying to get him to go back to bed, instead making his unsteady way to a chair and sitting down.

"I'm not a kid and I don't want to go back to bed," he finally said grumpily, batting away at both of them. "I need to be awake. So can I get some coffee?" he said, blinking and sounding vaguely hopeful, as if the coffee would just appear in front of him.

"I'll make you a cup," Tifa said, her hands on his shoulders.

"Thanks," he said, managing to give her a wan smile. Tifa smiled back, then the smile fell of her face before she managed to cover it, and she squeezed his shoulders once before heading back behind the bar to set the coffee going, looking shaken.

Zack grabbed the chair across from Cloud, flipping it around and then dropping down in it in a straddle, his arms crossing over the back. He rested his chin on his forearms and stared at Cloud.

This close, he could see why Tifa had reacted the way she had.

Cloud's pupils, thank the gods above and below, were _normal_\--round and dark. But his irises were still _green_. Still a bright, familiar _green_.

Zack took a deep breath before speaking and hoped the words would come out normal.

"So what happened back there? With the shrimpy one?" he said, deciding to go for that first.

"Kadaj," Cloud said, absentmindedly.

"...Bless you," Zack said, blinking.

"_Kadaj_. That's his_ name_, idiot," Cloud said, giving Zack another of his "..." looks, looking like he'd love to throw something at Zack's head, but doing so would be more effort than it was worth. "The other ones are Loz and Yazoo. Loz was the one that got me in the church. The big one."

"What in Hel's name happened there?" Zack said, his hands digging into his arms so hard it _hurt_. He had the feeling he didn't want to see what the church looked like, not if it had been that big, crazy, fight-happy bruiser that had gone there. Just thinking about how _that_ fight must have gone made Zack want to find that Loz guy and either rip his head off or give it the old SOLDIER try. ...Which would mean ripping his head off and then beating the corpse with it, because SOLDIERs never did anything by halves.

"Did you _see_ the church?" Cloud said flatly. "He beat the shit out of me is what happened. I was doing almost OK until he fucking _electrocuted_ me. Then, things didn't go so well. You saw that weapon of his," Cloud said tiredly. "I got it point blank and full blast."

"He _what_?" Zack said, slamming both hands onto the table so hard it splintered. "_Hoshit_. Sorry, Tifa!" he yelled, wincing, but on one level kind of hoping she took the bait; that she would jokingly snap back at him about his breaking things the way she did when things were _OK_.

"You're paying for a new one!" she yelled from the back, having not seen what happened but having heard the cracking sound. "Along with fixing my wall!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, outwardly deflating but on the inside something that had knotted up letting go with a sense of _relief_, then he went back to Cloud because the mess with Tifa and everything she had said honestly could _wait_.

"Wall?" Cloud asked. "What did you do to the wall?"

Zack winced and changed the subject. "So...uh...anyway, what happened at the City of the Ancients?"

Cloud shut his eyes and rubbed tiredly at his temples with the thumb and middle finger of one hand, looking, for that moment, so terribly _fragile_, so pale Zack could see the blue of veins running under his skin.

...He really _was_ going to rip that big guy's head off for this. And that little shrimp's, too.

"I don't understand it myself," Cloud finally said. "There was...the water, there was something about the water. Kadaj stepped into it, and it turned _black_. All of the children went into it, and when they drank it..." Cloud trailed off, looking disturbed. "Their eyes all changed, to look like Sephiroth's."

That...was not good, Zack thought--even if it had been temporary, since all of the kids had looked normal when he got there, the fact that they had managed to change _kids_, not Sephiroth clones but kids, was not good. "How so?" Zack said, the words sounding strange to his own ears.

"Like _Sephiroth's_," Cloud said again, blinking at Zack and frowning. "Green and with cat's-eye pupils."

"Then what?" Tifa asked softly from behind the bar, pouring coffee into a mug and her words careful.

"Kadaj," Cloud said, pressing on, "pulled me into the water, and then, well, I'm not sure if he was trying to make me drink it or drown me in it or what, but..." Cloud's words faltered, trailed off. "I think I hit a Limit Break, but don't remember what happened there after that," he finally said, his lips pressed tight.

Tifa put a cup of coffee in front of him and Cloud clutched at it like a lifeline. His words fell off again and he stared off, frowning, and Zack could see about a bajillion wheels spinning in Cloud's head, and none of them, from the looks of them, any good.

Head-ripping off. It was definitely looking like a good hobby to pick up.

Whatever had happened, it explained, sort of, why Cloud's own eyes had changed and maybe why the kids had changed back...but not why they were like they were now.

It was Tifa who spoke next, and Zack never in a million years would have expected what came out of her mouth.

But then, it seemed to be a day for that.

Tifa sat down next to Cloud, steepled her fingers together, leveled a hard look at him, and very flatly said, "Try."

Both of them looked at her, Zack with his jaw hanging open and Cloud seeming so surprised he couldn't manage to blink. Cloud frowned and clutched even tighter at his mug of coffee, and Zack wondered what in Hel's name it was that Tifa was trying to do.

"I said I don't remember," he finally said, staring at his coffee.

Her voice was the same, conversational and yet implacable. "Because you're not _trying_ to."

"Tifa!" Zack said, glaring at her.

She just raised an eyebrow at him, and there was something in that look that let him know that while she was letting everything from before go for now, it was _only_ for now and it was still there and she still stood behind every word, and went back to staring at Cloud. Then she stood up and walked out of the room, with both Cloud and Zack staring at her, and she returned a few minutes later with a small hand mirror, which she held out in front of Cloud. "Explain _this_, Cloud, because 'I don't remember' isn't enough!"

Cloud stared at his own reflection in confusion for a moment before he noticed his eyes, and the blood drained out of his face.

"Well?" Tifa said, her voice wavering for a moment before going firm and implacable.

"I can't," he said hoarsely, staring at the mirror, staring at his green eyes and swallowing. "I _can't_ explain it."

Zack had no idea how someone as broad-shouldered as Cloud was managed to hunch in on themselves so much, but right then Cloud was pretty good at it, and that was about the point when Zack started seeing red and realized that Tifa wasn't the only one still somewhat pissed off.

"Tifa, can I talk to you upstairs?" Zack said, using every ounce of self control he had not to start yelling at her right then and there.

"I'm not five years old, guys," Cloud said flatly, eying the two of them and something about him looking like it was relaxing and on firmer ground, as if the distraction had helped. "I won't burst into tears if Mommy and Daddy start fighting in front of me."

The both of them flinched and Cloud eyed them again. "You two need _serious_ help," he said, shaking his head as if he could guess why that line had made the two of them look guilty. "My head hurts. I'm going back to bed. Feel free to talk about me behind my back while I'm gone," he said, his words dry as he pulled himself to his feet. He made his way back towards to stairs, gait a bit more steady than it had been, but not by much, and Zack didn't miss the faint way Cloud was shaking.

Cloud turned to stare at the both of them at the foot of the stairs. "And aside from needing help, at least one of you two _really_ needs to teach me how to beat the crap out of things so next time I _don't_ end up electrocuted and carted off again. Geostigma hitting me or not, that was fucking _embarrassing_."

Zack gave Tifa a tight smile. "I'll leave that to you, then, since you made it pretty clear you think I _suck_ at teaching him," he said, all of the anger from the argument that they had started beginning to swirl around inside him like a Bomb.

Cloud snorted. "After the way my ass got handed to me in the church," he said, and that look on his face now freaked Zack out because it was another of those not-Cloud looks, but it wasn't an _Aerith_ look either; there was something about that green-eyed look and the angle of Cloud's eyebrow that made fear explode in the bottom of Zack's stomach, "I don't blame her."

Cloud gave him a little smirk, and at that moment, the last thing Zack wanted was for Cloud to have a sword in his hands.

_Ever_.

Tifa nodded. "We'll start tomorrow, then," she said, and Zack didn't miss the self-satisfied look on her face, and that was when Zack's temper-Bomb went from just swirling around to twitching and swelling.

When Cloud finally made it up the stairs, the temper-Bomb exploded.

"What the fuck is wrong with you today, Tifa? If _Cloud_ of all people says he doesn't remember something, then he _doesn't_ remember!"

"And it's _because_ it's Cloud that he needs to try! Did you _see_ his eyes?! Do you think that's normal and we shouldn't try to figure out what happened? We can't afford not to know, and here you are, _babying_ him again, Zack!"

The argument from before flared back, sharper and brighter and more dangerous than before.

"Babying him? What in Shiva's name does that even mean, huh? How am I 'babying' him when all I'm doing is _listening_ to him?"

"You're not listening to anyone, let alone Cloud!"

"What?! Have you gotten us confused or something? Cloud says he doesn't remember, so I listened to him! You're the one ignoring him and trying to force him to do something he can't!"

"How do you know he can't?" Tifa said, her hands on her hips. "You're letting him get away without trying!"

"Maybe because if anyone knows what he can and can't remember, it's Cloud?"

"Something that's pretty convenient for you, eh?" Tifa said, narrowing her eyes.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Zack said warily. "What do you mean by 'convenient for me'? Because this is pretty _inconvenient_, if you ask me!"

"Why didn't you ever tell him how Aerith died?" Tifa hissed in a low whisper, narrow-eyed.

Zack's eyes flew open and his jaw dropped. His mouth moved uselessly a few times before he managed to get words out. "Where--what the--where did that even--what, you think he _needs_ to know that?" Zack finally managed to hiss back, his voice lower than Tifa's and his eyes darting to the doorway.

"_He_ doesn't need to know, or _you_ need to rewrite the past? It's a lot _easier_ on you, isn't it, if you can pretend what happened didn't," Tifa said with a sickeningly sweet smile, her voice still held to a low whisper. "If Cloud doesn't remember, you can forget. Makes things with him a _lot_ easier, doesn't it?"

Zack was so angry that he was shaking. "Tifa, when in _Hel's name_ did you turn into such a _bitch_?"

"Probably about the same time _you_ turned into such a _coward_," Tifa shot back, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

There was a long, tense silence before Zack drew a long, slow breath; every muscle tight and hands clenched into fists. "I know what it's like to live with something like that, Tifa," Zack hissed back angrily, his voice pitched to not carry out of the room. "It is not something I would wish on _anyone_, let alone Cloud. So trust me, it is a _blessing_ he doesn't remember and his memory from those few days he was snapping out of the mako poisoning are still scrambled up," he snapped, making a wild, spinning gesture with his hand at his head.

"He knows all he needs to know, which is that _Sephiroth_ killed her," Zack said, putting his hands on his hips. Something seemed to occur to him suddenly, and he stared her straight in the eyes. "And, huh, you're getting on my case for not saying anything to him, but I don't see _you_ rushing all up to tell him, either. You obviously have a mouth and no problems voicing your opinions. But funny how you're bitching at _me_ when _you've_ kept your mouth shut about it, too. Why _is_ that?" he said, giving her that same, sickly-sweet smile Tifa had been giving him. "'Cause it seems like I'm not the only one _whispering_," he finished.

Tifa's flinched, and a moment of weakness and uncertainly seemed to flash through her before her resolve strengthened and she changed direction. "Wh-what if it's Sephiroth again?" Tifa yelled, pushing away what Zack said and raising her voice. "Around those three..._things_, in that weird water than made the kids turn into...whatever it made them, and they put Cloud in it, and now his eyes are...what if it's Sephiroth?!" she yelled, not backing down. She shook her head, jaw set stubbornly and eyes narrowed into slits. "I'm _not_ risking it, Zack. I'm not risking it and I'm not risking him! I'm not losing anyone else!"

It hit Zack like a slap to the face and anger flared up even more. "You're not the only one who lost everything, Tifa! Did you forget what happened to _my_ hometown, too?"

"At least you still have a mother to call you," Tifa shot back bitterly.

"Only because of Cissnei," he said tightly. "And you remember what happened to _her_, right? _Right_? Or my friend Kunsel, hey, remember him? High enough class SOLDIER to turn right into a _Sephiroth clone_. Do you have any idea how many people I worked with and was friends with that _I_ had to kill? So if we're playing 'Who Lost More,' just _stop it right now_."

"Why, because you think you'll win?" she said sharply.

"No," Zack said softly, his shoulders slumping suddenly. He didn't want to be doing this; didn't want to fight anymore, and he felt as tired as Cloud had looked. "Because _Cloud_ does."

"...That was a low blow, Zack," Tifa said, as breathless as if she had been punched in the stomach. She pulled out a chair and sat down, still looking like she had been hit. She looked away, frowning to herself. "And it all comes back to Cloud in the end, doesn't it?" she said bitterly, halfway under her breath, shaking her head.

"What in Shiva's name does _that_ mean?" Zack said, suddenly feeling very confused and very, very tired. He had no idea where this conversation--if it was even a conversation--was going anymore.

Tifa startled, as if she hadn't expected him to hear her, then snapped, "You know full well what I mean," angrily.

"No, I don't!" Zack yelled, throwing his hands in the air before he pulled a chair out viciously and dropped into it. He scrubbed his face with his hand. "I don't know what in Hel's realm you're talking about, Tifa!"

"You're not very honest, are you, Zack?" she said, narrowing her eyes. "Did you even think about the way you were carrying him this time?"

He dug his fingers into his hair then looked up at her, elbows on the table and hair clutched in his hands. "Tifa, I _really don't know_ what you're talking about," Zack said plaintively. "I _really, really_ don't. I was carrying like that because that was how I brought him back on the bike with one seat and because I've had so many Geostigma attacks today that I honestly don't even know if I could lift my sword up again, much less try to hoist Cloud over my shoulder. I'm wiped out, I feel like shit and am in no shape to do anything, but only the gods know what those three are planning, plus I have no idea why you're this mad or why you're dredging all this up _now_. My brain is too fried for me to even try to figure it out and...and...can we just drop it? For now? Please?" he asked pleadingly. "I'm tired of fighting, and there's enough happening without...without whatever _this_ is. Can it wait? Until we don't have Seph clones putting Cloud in a makoless mako-coma any more? _Please_?"

Tifa let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh, then looked away, shaking her head. "And you just--_fine_. Whatever. I...just...whatever. Later," she said, suddenly sounding as tired as Zack felt, and she was blinking quickly. "Just tell me what happened out there tonight, then. When you got there. Vincent told me what he knew, but I want to hear your side of--"

There was the sound of motorcycle turning on in the background, then the sound of tires squealing, and Tifa sighed. "And there he goes."

"Dumbass," Zack said, staring at his hands. "He knows it's not safe." He sighed. "But I don't really blame him for not wanting to be here right now."

"Just let him go," Tifa said, not looking up from her hands folded together on the table. There were bags under her eyes, and Zack wondered, for a moment, why it always had to be _them_ and why it never seemed to _stop_\--first ShinRa, then Sephiroth, then the Geostigma, and now _this_.

"We're fucking everything up, aren't we?" he said softly.

Tifa smiled, faintly, but the only humor there was gallows humor. "Probably."

"I don't know what to do."

"Neither do I," Tifa said, her voice a whisper. "But I wish to the Heavens I did."

They sat there in silence for a long while, Zack staring at Tifa and Tifa staring at her hands, and Zack reached across the table and put his hand over hers.

Tifa's face crumpled slightly, looking as if she was about to burst into tears. "You're a cruel man, Zack," she said softly, closing her eyes and bowing her head, but she didn't pull her hands away.

"I..._I'm sorry_," he said, not sure what he was doing wrong, what he could say to make things better, or even why everything was getting as fucked up as it was in the first place. "I just...I don't know what I'm doing. I'm _trying_, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix anything and everything is going _wrong_ and no matter how hard I try, I just can't make it go _right_. I'm always one step behind everything. I just...I just don't want to lose anyone else. You, Cloud, the kids...you're all I've got," he said honestly. "And I don't want to hurt any of you. But...I just don't want to lose anyone else again," he said, repeating what he'd said before helplessly and feeling stupid, that he didn't know how to put anything into _words_. He was out of his depth and he knew it, and all his trying just seemed to mess everything up, and he couldn't understand _why_.

Tifa didn't say anything, but she put her thumb lightly over Zack's fingers so he couldn't pull his hand away, and he figured that at least he'd maybe done something right.

"So you want to know what happened after I got to the Forgotten City?" he said, because there was really nowhere else to go, not that was _safe_.

And it was pretty fucked up, he thought, that talking about Sephiroth-larvae-clone-fragment-things was the _safer_ conversation.

Tifa nodded quickly, not raising her bowed head. "Yeah. What happened?"

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath before he sat back in his chair, pulling his hand away and trying to get back to solid ground. Tifa wiped at her eyes quickly, and that made Zack feel worse than he had, something he hadn't thought possible until then. But he didn't say anything, since Tifa seemed to want to move away from the conversation as much as he did.

"Well. After you called, I headed out to the Forgotten City. It took me longer than I should have," he said, frowning.

"Why?" Tifa asked, frowning herself.

"Geostigma attacks," Zack said, a faint trace of bitterness in his voice. "One hit me right before I could get to them--hit me just when someone over there started screaming."

"Wait...wait...you had a flare of Geostigma right before you got there, right when you heard screaming...so maybe right when everything happened, when Cloud's eyes...when his eyes got like Sephiroth's, maybe?" Tifa said. Her eyes focused inwards when Zack nodded, darting around with her quick thoughts. "The same time...Zack, you don't think they're related, do you?" she said quickly. "Cloud said he had a flare-up when he was fighting Loz, you had one when Cloud was...when they were doing whatever they did to Cloud."

"I also had a really nasty one on the way there," Zack said. "Before that one. Getting two of them in a row like that was just...ugh. And it was probably the third one today," he said, trying to keep his worry out his his voice--attacks becoming more frequent was a bad sign.

"So maybe around the time they first changed the kids?" Tifa asked, "And Cloud said he had one at the church, and you had one earlier, too, and..." Her voice trailed off as her eyes went round and the blood started draining out of her face. "Zack...you don't think they're _controlling_ the Geostigma, somehow?"

There was a long silence where they just stared wide-eyed at each other before Zack grinned broadly, let out a cheerful, "Great, we're screwed!" then thudded his head against the table.

\--

It was quiet here; it was always quiet, which was why Cloud often went to the church. Usually, he was grateful for it--it was somewhere he didn't feel pulled in twenty different directions at once, and the very stillness of the place was comforting. But now, it was too quiet--instead of being a comfort, the stillness was a trap and he was on edge, surrounded by the chaotic thoughts within his own head.

Tifa had been right, he thought. He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. He wasn't trying to remember what happened. Being honest, he didn't _want_ to remember. What he could remember had felt like fracturing, and it left him feeling like the inside of his own head was _fragile_; like it had broken into pieces and was just a bunch of fragments held together with glue that hadn't finished drying yet.

_Fragments_, he thought, and frowned. His own mind felt fragmented, and he wondered if it was something like that which had made those three--fragments of Sephiroth's shattered mind. What would it be like, he wondered, to only be one of those fragments of memory?

Until yesterday, he'd felt--well, not exactly congruent, but at least _whole_. Parts might not have made sense, but it hadn't felt like things had been _missing_; didn't feel like the parts were separate and in pieces instead of put together.

_This can't go on_, he thought. _Those three will eat me alive like this_.

He tried to think back, remember what had happened. Everything was clear until the water, and then everything was blank. And so he tried to make his way into that blank, tried to force his way into it, tried to bring it to light--

There was a roar of water in his ears, and that was when it all went _strange_.

\--

"This has been a day," Zack mumbled, his face still pressed into the table.

"No kidding," Tifa said flatly.

"I'm calling time," he said, waving a hand in the air. "I'm done. I can't take any more today. I officially call _time_."

"Zack--" Tifa began, and he shook his head, still not raising it.

"No, nuh-uh, no way! Time!" he yelled desperately, covering his head with his arms. "I can't, I just can't. So I'm begging you, even if it's life and death, it's got to wait until tomorrow."

Tifa's words were sharp. "Quit making all the decisions for everyone, Zack."

He looked up at her, making puppy-eyes. "Tifa, you can _try_ to talk to me, but my brain is shutting down, and I swear on Odin's eye that I can't do any more," he said pleadingly. "I need to change my bandages, at least. I told you how many Geostigma hits I had today. Right now, I'm too wiped to manage anything other than changing them," he said, feeling desperate. He wasn't up for another fight, and they'd fought more in the last day than they had in half a year, and he suddenly felt ready to fall over--but it was something deeper than that, something that ran through his entire body and left him more drained and exhausted than he had ever felt in his life, and the realization hit him hard: _SOLDIER or not_, he realized, _I'm_...dying. _I'm really dying_.

He suddenly had to get out of there, and jumped up to his feet, not looking at Tifa.

"I've got to change my bandages, and get some sleep," he said, staring at the wall. "I can't think, and as thick as I am, me thinking less than I normally do is a disaster waiting to happen."

He managed a smile, but it felt fake.

"In the morning," Tifa said, staring at him strangely and frowning faintly, and Zack headed up the stairs, towards the bathroom, to get away while he still could; while he could still keep that smile on his face.

When he was alone, he let his guard down; let his shoulders slump and let the pain he'd been feeling all day flit across his face. Alone like this, it was OK--he didn't have to put up a brave front; didn't have to smile a hollow smile and pretend his body wasn't betraying him. The smile wiped off his face, and he was glad to have it gone.

It almost shocked him how much it hurt to take his shirt off--his ribs felt like they had been repeatedly kicked by a whole flock of Levrikons, and his leg felt strangely weak. Once he managed, slowly and carefully and biting his lips against the pain--to get the shirt off, he stared at the wrapping and bandages around his chest and ribs, and the weeping of the Geostigma that stained both a sickening ashen tar black.

"Evil substance, eh?" he said bitterly, made suddenly aware of the real meaning of Vincent's words. He rested his fingers against the stained bandages, feeling the give beneath it and how damp the bandages were; there was the smell of the diseased weeping and the _sting_\--and the way his whole body seemed to feel it, like a flinch. "Yeah, no kidding," he let out, then pressed his lips together tightly.

It had never hurt this long after an attack. And as much as he wanted to tell himself that all it was was that he had pushed himself...he _knew_. He had seen enough people dying from the Geostigma, had read up enough on whatever he could get his hands on.

It was a bad sign, when it hurt more all the time and wept in more than one place.

How long did he have, he wondered--another few months? Maybe half a year if he was lucky? How long before his body lost the fight with the 'evil substances' with in? How much would it _hurt_?

He wasn't expecting anyone to be there; anyone to have been watching, so his head jerked up when a soft voice came from the doorway.

\--

Fragments of memory. A flash of memory, like bright sparks in the darkness. He reached for them in his mind, and tried to _remember_. And each broken fragment of a memory came in a flash, sparking another memory that fit but _didn't_, each coming and then a white, glitching flare into another, and he struggled to make sense of the things that had never been meant to fit together. It was like the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle, trying to do it with the pieces upside and with pieces from different puzzles tossed in, but the pieces were same shape as others, so it was almost impossible to know what puzzles the pieces belonged to.

That is a weird analogy, he thought, but also had to admit to himself that it fit.

..._And I'm stalling_, he thought, angry at himself. _Focus, here_.

Fragments of memory. A flash of memory, like bright sparks in the darkness.

\--the feel of a sword, Sephiroth's sword, going through him, _pain_\--

\--a sword in his hand, Angeal's sword, _that girl_ with her back to him and--

\--falling, he was falling, and no, not like _this_\--

\--everything burning, _burning_\--

\--alone--

\--nothing but a puppet--

\--nothing but an _experiment_\--

\--I've never seen the sky--

\--burn it _all_\--

\--flee--

\--the last of my kind--

\--You mean you're different?--

\--Find your Promised Land--

\--Promise me that you'll come back and protect me--

\--_alone_\--

\--looking down to see the sword, Zack's sword, _pain_\--

\--impossible, there was no way that a _trooper_ could--

\--his eyes are so _blue_, so empty and so blue, but...it's not your fault, it's not your fault, so--

\--floating, floating, fragmented, so many _voices_\--

\--_wake up_\--

\--_alone_\--

\--and _live_\--

Surrounded by the scent of lilies, both comforting and upsetting, Cloud gave up, then sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose again, his head feeling like it didn't fit together, and a headache beginning from the dissonance. He shook his head and tried to push all the memory shards away; to make sense of them later. He remembered his bandages then--they had needed changing for a long time now, and he was aware of how they felt stiff and dried. It was a relief, now, to have something concrete to focus on. He didn't often try to _remember_ things--there was too much fragmentation and too little of it fit together _right_. It did fit together, in his mind, but only so long as he didn't try to make sense of it. It was only when he tried to make sense of it, tried to put things into some kind of logical pattern, that it all fell apart, and it was such a mental strain that it bordered on physical pain. It was almost impossible to figure out what memories were truly his and which weren't; in his mind, all of it had happened to _him_, and knowing that wasn't true but not knowing how to separate it made his head feel like it was going to split apart.

He refocused on the here and the now. Bandages--it was past time to change them and he wanted the heavily sticky and stiff ones he was wearing _off_.

He stood up and went over to the bandages he kept on hand at the church, and grimly went about changing them. Every time he changed them, it was a reminder that he was dying; of his own mortality.

He made a face at the bandages when he got a clear look at them--they were disgusting by that point and had long since saturated to the point where they couldn't hold any more, meaning some of what had oozed out of him had caked onto his arm, and flaked off as Cloud removed the bandages.

It never really stopped being disgusting.

He got up and quickly got some water and a clean cloth--if he'd been home, he'd have just taken a shower, but for now, washing his arm off would do. He started washing his arm off in the dim light of one of the lanterns, and stopped short as he got down to the skin.

He stared at his arm, swallowing thickly in his shock, and the cloth dropped out of his hands and fluttered to the ground, forgotten and ignored.

\--

"_Kadaj_!"

Kadaj woke slowly, the world only now beginning to come back. He blinked, slowly, over and over to try and sort his disorientation. Everything was hazy; out of focus and off-kilter, and the sky was the wrong color--it was the first tinges of pre-dawn, as if several hours had passed.

There were hands on his arms--one brother at each side--helping him sit up, and for a brief moment he let himself be weak; sagged and let himself be supported by them. His head was pounding and felt wrong inside, like it was stuffed with cotton and hollow at the same time. He looked around wearily, more exhausted than he had ever been in his life, and it took a long moment for what he was seeing to register in his disoriented mind.

The children were gone. The pool was no longer brackish but clear, with a faint, disgusting scent of lilies wafting from it. And--

Kadaj winced at a spike of something--he couldn't call it pain, it was something else, something almost the opposite, like a pain defined by its absence, hurting by not--pulsed in his head, and he let himself sag more against the strong hands of his brothers as he struggled to find Mother's presence in his mind again.

He didn't notice the look they gave each other, over his head.

"Our 'little big brother' is more dangerous than he looks," Kadaj finally said in a voice made intentionally light, shaking his head as if to clear it, to get that strange pain-but-not out of it. But the problem was that now his head was too clear; that pain-but-not was a kind of clarity he had never had. There was a terrifying almost-silence in his mind that he didn't understand, and he _knew_ it was their brother's fault, him and that magic with the stench of flowers that had come out of him. It had done something to him, as surely as it had ripped his little brothers away from Reunion. Everything in his head was so _quiet_; down to a faint whisper he had to strain to hear, and he could feel panic beginning to set in. He struggled, tried to pull the power of Mother's cells that he had always been able to draw, and there was _nothing_, nothing beyond a faint buzz that had once been a roar. He reached for that feeling of Sephiroth, the one he had always had but _hated_, and there was...it was...

He needed Mother. He needed Her now more than ever, but he couldn't feel any more of her or of Sephiroth than a faint echo.

"Tomorrow we're getting Mother," he said, his eyes glittering in the moonlight as he stared at the water he didn't dare touch, that Loz was pulling away from looking disgusted and Yazoo was staring at as if he were planning, analyzing. He shrugged off their hands and got to his feet, swaying slightly but getting stronger, steadier. He pushed his own exhaustion away; his body and its demands were of no importance, not now. All that mattered was filling the terrifying almost-_silence_ in his mind.

All that mattered was finding Mother.

Mother...and the one who had done this to him.

_Cloud_.

He clenched his hands into fists and narrowed his eyes. "We're going to Midgar."


End file.
